Monkey Man

Trouble Brewing for Starbucks in China

While I agree that expat executives and senior level professionals are key target markets for Starbucks in China, you are missing the fact that on any given day a large percentage of people sitting in Starbucks are also young Chinese adults in their early 20's who for the most part live at home with their parents and thus are able to treat most of their paycheck as discretionary spend. This demographic has not been been affected much by the global downturn and thus key for Starbucks is to target these folks as well in order to further drive sales.