Refer to the Starbucks vignette at the beginning of this chapter. Starbucks has aggressively pursued digital ventures to improve the customer experience and increase the amount of customer transactions per visit. Among other things, Starbucks mines the data from customer loyalty cards to examine buying patterns to predict what customers will buy in the future. It is looking for an increased "wallet-share."
a. Describe why it is difficult to evaluate Starbucks' digital ventures' investments using traditional capital budgeting techniques.
b. What are some other ways that Starbucks could evaluate the benefit of its digital ventures?