I mean, that was the literal whole point of the article, that they were culturally caught off guard. It happens! I'm going to try to find it again and edit this with a link.
It’s “fun” to think that Starbucks struggles in Italy is because they are dumb and didn’t realize that Italians have a long cultural tradition with coffee that’s very different than Americans. “Oh dumb Americans and dumb Starbucks. How stupid are they to try to sell espresso in the land of espresso lol”. You need to engage just a little bit of critical thinking and realize that Starbucks knew that well in advance and thought the would give it a shot anyway. Maybe they could occupy a different cultural niche just like they did in dozens of other countries with similarly rich cultural traditions around coffeeshops and coffee or tea like the Middle East and Asia.
Either they got over their shock fast and learned how to take advantage of us, or it was the plan all along.