Sep 28 2007
Cafe Mocha Extra Shot With Soy Milk Without Cream
This is in response to an article from liliankow.com
I am indeed a Starbucks fan. Café Mocha – Extra shot and soy milk, without cream. Haha… Thus when I had to do a research paper for Business Management years ago, Starbucks was the choice.
Here’s why Starbucks is currently an exploding permanent fixture in the global landscape.
When two researchers from the University of Massachusetts at Boston did a comprehensive chemical analysis of Boston Harbor in 1998, they found something that surprised them: The waters of the harbour contained a significant amount of caffeine. The concentration wasn’t high enough to give the fish a buzz, but the findings were puzzling nonetheless. Caffeine forms only in a few land-dwelling plants, so how did it get to Boston Harbour? The polite answer: Human waste. People now drink so much coffee that it’s started seeping into the environment around us. In fact, caffeine shows up in hundreds of the nation’s rivers, lakes, and bays – as well as in treated drinking water. Edward Furlong, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher, has a nickname for this phenomenon: “the Starbucks effect”.
The Starbucks brand now stands as one of the most powerful in existence, ranked by the consulting firm Interbrand as the fourth most effective brand in the world, behind Apple, Google, and Ikea.
Bear in mind though that Starbucks’ worldwide explosion wasn’t fueled by coffee; it was the way they sold it. Starbucks closely tracked consumers’ desires, their hidden needs, even their favourite colours and music. This awareness of customer psychology has netted Starbucks 40 million loyal customers per week. The average customer visits the chain 18 times a month – a higher rate than any other retailer in the world.
The secret behind Starbucks’ magnetic pull lies in the extraordinary amount of control it exercises over its image. At Starbucks, nothing is accidental. Everything the customer interacts with, from the obsessively monitored store environment down to the white paper cups, is the product of deliberation and psychological research. The coffee house as we know it is a calculated creation, tweaked and refined in large part by Howard Schultz – Starbucks’ charismatic, Brooklyn-born chairman – and his army of designers.
AMERICA’S PUB
In a sense, Starbucks never should have worked. Twenty years ago, people just weren’t drinking coffee. But Starbucks offered an antidote to an overworked culture: somewhere to just hang out. It eased the problem of social disconnection while offering an item that made people feel coddled and tranquil. Sociology professor Ray Oldenburg called this a “third place”, with home and work being places one and two.
KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE
In 1996, Starbucks executives interviewed hundreds of coffee drinkers, asking participants to close their eyes, go into a “dream state,” and describe what they would see, taste, hear, touch, and smell in the greatest coffee experience imaginable. To the dismay of the company’s coffee-focused hardliners, the interviewees talked very little about the coffee itself, but quite a bit about feelings and atmosphere. Customers didn’t really care about coffee minutiae like flavour profiles and acidity; instead, they craved a sense of relaxation, warmth and luxury. They wanted a coffee experience, an idealized version of the much loved “coffee break”, and they were willing to pay for it. Starbucks knew they needed to concentrate on its customers’ feelings.
BUILDING THE BRAND
Schultz has always been careful about the ideas he associates with the company and its core product. You will never see a Starbucks drink discounted. On national issues, the company stakes out its positions with brand enhancement in mind. Its print ads usually “thank” customers for helping Starbucks provide humanitarian services like tsunami relief, thereby aligning itself with the righteous cause in the consumers’ mind – making them feel that buying a Starbucks latte is a form of global altruism.
FINISHING TOUCHES
Drinks aren’t the only thing that Starbucks tailored to each customer’s desires. The company designs its stores with the consumer’s subconscious mind. Warmth, luxury, and emotion are the focus, with an emphasis on subdued and gentle colours. Ever notice that the tables are round and small to preserve the self-esteem of customers drinking alone, since a circular table has no “empty” seats?
To some, this ubiquity is the height of convenience. To others, it’s a sign of apocalypse. For the latter, there is some consolation. If this is truly the end of the universe, at least there’s comfortable seating.
P/S: And despite knowing all these, I still succumb to Starbucks coffee and I love it in a takeaway cup! Aaaahhhhh…..
