Exercise: Peet's Online Presence Blend

I selected Peet's Coffee and Tea as the organization for this assignment, on the grounds that it was a local company that had branched out as a nationwide presence. Although it lacks the worldwide presence of Starbuck's at this point in time, it has the potential to do so, provided it markets its product effectively and maintains effective connections with consumers.

1. A search for "Peet's Coffee" using Google Blog Search revealed less about any customer opinions on the subject than it did about recent news affecting the organization. Several industry-based blogs, such as Bullfax and DataGrant Venture Capital News, mentioned a recent bidding war between Peet's and Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee. The company both parties were trying to acquire manufactures K-Cups, a type of single-serving coffee "cartridge" that is particularly popular at workplaces. Other blogs appeared either to mention sales and promotions going on at Peet's and other coffee franchises, or generally glowing reviews.

A Yelp search yielded over 300 reviews for the San Jose area alone. Most of the respondents were already fans of their actual coffee, calling it "better than Starbucks, if given the choice" and noting that "the coffee tastes exactly the same here as it does any other peets." Thus, most of the reviews had to do with the amenities offered at various locations, as well as their proximity to the reviewer's home or work. There was also much favorable mention of the company's tea products, which drew people to the store who did not even drink coffee.

2. In addition to maintaining an extensive home page, Peet's has its own Twitter feed, Peets_Tweets. Although this feed mainly mentions various sales, promotions, and limited edition coffee and tea products, there are also a number of responses to customer concerns. These usually have to do with locations of coffee shops; when such shops are not available, Peet's will usually mention that their products are sold in local supermarkets, and provide a URL for store listings. At present, this feed has over 7,000 followers; by contrast, Starbuck's main twitter feed has almost 80,000. Given their respective market shares, this seems a reasonable difference.

Overall, Peet's efforts in using Web 2.0 tools seems to be working. A search on SocialMention yielded a 9:1 positive sentiment ratio, although the majority of comments were neutral ones. One of the most popular keywords used in relation to Peet's was "Starbucks," ostensibly for comparison. Twitter and Digg were the overwhelming favorites in terms of particular application used. The most popular related hash tags had to do with employment, and most tweets had to do with the person's current location at a shop. By contrast, the Digg links mostly had to do with a local news story about a recent homicide at a Peet's in San Jose, although this did not seem to affect customer opinions of the brand as a whole. Both Tweets and Diggs had a passion rating of over 50%, indicating a highly dedicated fanbase. A search on HowSociable also revealed a strong - and positive - presence on Facebook, with over 50,000 fans subscribed to their site. Posts on their wall were also largely positive, but there did not appear to be any direct public response to customer comments.

3. Other than Twitter and Facebook, Peet's does not appear to be using any other Web 2.0 applications, such as a blog from their website. Communication on their Facebook site seems to be one-sided: customers post comments which receive no response, and Peet's posts links to information about sales, promotions, events, and other items of interest, sometimes garnering responses from customers. Their most proactive form of customer contact appears to be on Twitter. While this is a strong start, and probably the best medium to do so, Peet's could make more of an effort to address customer concerns on Facebook. While occasional negative news stories might come up in connection to the organization - for example, the homicide in San Jose - these stories are often not findable until at least the second page of results, and do not appear to have generated any transparent attempts at spin control.  Overall, Peet's appears to have an honest and reasonably transparent online presence, but could make a stronger attempt at responding to consumers in addition to reaching out to them.