2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十一月-Starbucks Bets On a Chinese Expansion

Anchor: The business report continues our look at the United States and China.

Anchor: If your town seems to have a Starbucks in every corner, you would feel at home in some parts of China. Starbucks has 140 Chinese stores designed much like their American counterparts. Coffee company's efforts show some of the ways that Americans are competing for a share of China's new wealth. We contact the Starbucks' chairman Howard Schultz just after he took a trip to China.

Howard Schultz: The stores that we've opened in China are larger in size than the dwellings 1 in which people live, so our stores have taken on a life of their own in terms of an extension of people's home and office. About 80% of our customers in the US take our coffee to go and over 80% of the Chinese customers have our coffee in the store and stay very long enjoying the environment. We, we are happy with that.

Anchor: When you say that a lot of your stores are bigger than a lot of people’s houses, it just underlines that this is a place with very modest living standards. How do you get people that are making $100 a week to spend $5 on a drink?

Howard Schultz: Yeah, well, there, you know, the customers who are coming to Starbucks are making more than that. But let me put it in perspective for you that I think is interesting. I am told that over 300 million Chinese people everyday are using a cell phone. And when you think about the fact that they have leapfrogged traditional technology, and many of those people never had access to a telephone at home. It demonstrates the adoption 2 that they have to new technology and Western type opportunities, so there is a large, large group of people with disposable income.

Anchor: What are the major challenges of doing business in China?

Howard Schultz: Well, the major challenges are you don't see any "For Rent" signs, so you really need to establish very strong relationships with government officials in order to build stores and open up stores and create distribute channels of distributions and we wanted to, to make sure that in order to build a very large company in ancient China, we invested heavily ahead the growth.

Anchor: Given that you've got a company that prides itself on the image of being ecologically friendly and environmentally friendly, employee friendly, how do you do business in a communist dictatorship without losing your soul?

Howard Schultz: I think that is a very important and right question, what I saw and the meetings I had with government officials was a very strong level of openness and understanding that a business like Starbucks which has built itself on its balance between profitability and benevolence 3 is the kind of business they would like to see succeed in China and what I mean by that specifically is that the Chinese government is very interested, I think, in opening up the doors to Western companies and Western brands, especially those companies (that) are gonna come, and be very respectful of the heritage and tradition of how that country was built.

Anchor: Do you ever talk to an official and he is quite friendly to you and quite receptive to what you want to do but, well, you get an uneasy feeling about it?

Howard Schultz: No, I haven't had, I think when you enter a country like China for that matter or in any other country, you really have to come hat in hand and demonstrate a willingness to understand their way of thinking, their way of life and I think what would most proud of is the foundation that we've built in China is very, very strong because the values and guiding principles of our company are the same as they are in America despite the fact we are doing business in China.

Anchor: Howard Schultz of Starbucks, thanks very much.

Howard Schultz: Thank you for having me on.