星巴克CEO回应瑞幸咖啡:想赶超我们?不太可能
Starbucks is unlikely to cede its leading position in China, the company's fastest-growing major market, to Chinese startup Luckin in 2019, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in an interview. Seattle-based Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain, has been building its presence in the world's second-biggest economy for the past couple of decades, while Luckin only launched at the beginning of last year, expanding rapidly with a focus on technology and heavy discounting even at the cost of mounting losses. "I think it's unlikely," said Johnson when asked if Luckin might overtake Starbucks in China by the end of 2019, pointing to the 18 percent growth in new Chinese stores the company racked up in the fourth quarter. "Just this last quarter we entered 10 new cities in China," he said, adding that each of those cites is larger than Los Angeles, the sprawling southern California metropolis with a population of around 4 million. Luckin has said it is targeting a total of more than 4,500 stores in China by the end of 2019, which would take it past Starbucks, which has long dominated the Chinese coffee market and currently has over 3,600 stores in the country. Many Luckin units are much smaller "points of presence" and not comparable to full-service Starbucks cafes, Johnson said. Johnson, who replaced Howard Schultz as Starbucks chief executive in April 2017, said he expects the company to be able to repeat last quarter's growth in China due to what he described as "a first-mover advantage" in the Asian giant. |