Starbucks and Mobile Wallets Gain Buy Side Attention

Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other retail companies have responded to customer demand by designing and marketing mobile wallets for their consumers. Mobile Wallet usage by consumers is expected to gain momentum in 2014, and begin to revolutionize the way people buy and pay for everyday purchases at familiar retail outlets. Starbucks is now live with its Square Wallet in 7000 of its stores in the US, and its popularity is driving the mobile wallet market faster than before.

Banks, Visa, Google and many other credit card companies offer wallets, but it has been Starbucks and other retailers who are generating the growth and potential of the mobile wallet. Mobile wallets are not a totally brand new concept. Google came out with its wallet several years ago, however it didn’t have any means of tapping into the retail customer loyalty aspect.

Starbucks is creating the loyalty and the buzz that will drive the mobile wallet into mainstream consumer usage. Starbucks has been offering the mobile wallet for a year now, and it has become a huge success with more and more coffee lovers using this mobile technology every day. Since last year, Starbucks stock value has climbed strongly even with the slowing down of the Chinese economy which was expected to dampen Starbucks growth.

The fact that Starbucks has been able to leverage more US consumer interest via its mobile wallet shows the innovative spirit of a brilliant CEO. Starbucks uses Square, which is a company under Visa’s financial control. Starbucks trendline is a sturdy angle of ascent on a weekly chart and had a strong earnings report October 18, 2013.

Starbucks is working all the angles including hiring veterans and military spouses, Tweet a Coffee which encourages spontaneous gifting on Twitter, and many more heart-tugging consumer loyalty building marketing strategies.

Although SBUX stock chart needs to have a minor correction to pattern out some of the speculation that is occurring in the stock, the company has a leader and a vision that continues to surprise and delight long term investors.

Guidance from Howard Schultz is for a robust fiscal 2014. Everything SBUX is doing is helping to generate more customer loyalty in a crowded retail coffee market, growth in other global markets, strategic vision moving ahead with adopting new technologies early on, and way ahead of its competition as well as other retail companies.

By focusing their efforts in improving customer relationships, SBUX has circumnavigated around the risks of systemic economic troubles in China, built a good foundation in other global markets, and is reestablishing itself as THE coffee company in the US.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty are goodwill items that are priceless to a company. An amazing CEO that has such brilliance is truly rare. This article is explaining the benefits of a great CEO and customer loyalty. The Starbucks Wallet is clearly a huge success and we are going to see many more retailers adopt this strategy soon.

Those retailers who adopt a wallet quickly will have much stronger growth potential than retailers who delay even briefly. The Mobile Wallet is a game changer, and it is a displacement technology.