Starbucks: Using Big Data, Analytics And Artificial Intelligence To Boost Performance

Not only does Starbucks go through mounds of coffee beans to satiate its raving fans, but they also have mounds of data that they leverage in many ways to improve the customer experience and their business. With 90 million transactions a week in 25,000 stores worldwide the coffee giant is in many ways on the cutting edge of using big data and artificial intelligence to help direct marketing, sales and business decisions. When Starbucks launched its rewards program and mobile app, they dramatically increased the data they collected and could use to get to know their customers and extract info about purchasing habits. The mobile app has more than 17 million and the reward program has 13 million active users. These users alone create an overwhelming amount of data about what, where and when they buy coffee and complementary products that can be overlaid on other data including weather, holidays and special promotions.