The origin of Starbucks takes us to the newly-established cafe along the street of Seattle’s Pike Place Market, where the coffee chain first began brewing and roasting in 1971. Since then, the conglomerate has cemented itself as a household name in the global coffee industry as a self-proclaimed “purveyor of globally-sourced and sustainable” beans. With its successful industrial breakthrough, the coffee chain secured its leading rank and garnered reputable prestige with its steadily-increasing annual revenue of nearly $33 billion while catering to the caffeine needs of an estimated 60 million individuals weekly through its 32,000 stores worldwide.
Recently, I’ve constantly found myself among the millions of people who feed the company’s income a little too much. As an avid consumer and victim of their ploy, during the school-hosted Intramurals, several of my batchmates and I ordered 3,000 pesos worth of Starbucks Frappuccinos® (with a trademark). We were more than willing to pay the price for, in its most basic form, liquified diabetes and everyone’s favorite drug: caffeine.
The Starbucks menu offers a bittersweet array of drinks, with iconic signatures, Italian staples, seasonal flavors, and premium brews. This selection has attracted a significant amount of both compliments and criticism. Corporate loyalists have commended the chain for the flavor and familiarity of their drinks. On the contrary, other aficionados have scrutinized the incompetency, malnutrition, and unaffordability of the menu items. Furthermore, professional critics and acquainted drinkers have roasted (pun intended) the company, with a consistent claim that the drinks offered are too commercial for quality and specialty. Despite the overpriced drinks that are as sugary as they are costly, most of us are still voluntary consumers who owe a lot of our identity as such to the company’s marketing.
Starbucks employs a rather complex marketing stratagem wherein they rely on the manipulation of our psychology instead of capitalization on existing assets. This began with the innovation of the “Third Place Concept,” which intended to portray the café as a cordial, home-away-from-home workspace with the added comfort of coffee. Greeted by the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee paired with the Italian-modeled interiors, the physical space ushers one into its relaxing ambiance. “...We are here to educate and enhance the best possible customer experience,” CEO Howard D. Schultz explained, conspicuously failing to mention the quality of the coffee itself. More than just caffeinated drinks, Starbucks sells a holistic experience—ambiance, branding, presence, and warmth—collectively known as the “Starbucks Experience.”
A twin-tailed siren with draped hair and a tiara in the brand’s signature color—green—is the company’s circular logo. Over the years, the brand has elevated its status with its seniority and by charging a premium for mere mediocrity, only supported by its avid bandwagon of consumers. From an economic standpoint, a standard, twelve-ounce cup of coffee costs less than a dollar or 50 pesos on average, while Starbucks charges almost septuple that for something similar, with the brand’s logo being essentially responsible for the premium. The effect follows a theory known as the “Halo Effect,” when one’s cognitive bias associates something with positive attributes, thus making one prefer that something. Today, the Starbucks logo is subconsciously and commonly recognized by many as a symbol of status, hence the apparent favor. Distinctively printed on cups with one’s misspelled name scribbled on the sides, the logo is arguably the brand’s focal selling point, to which the company’s billions of dollars worth of revenue is indirectly attributed.
Admittedly, there is something so irresistibly empowering about purchasing a drink from Starbucks. Whether it is your mental conviction to do so or the logo’s sirenic gaze effectively luring you, it’s tempting. Starbucks sells an “item” beyond the menu—its brand—with its logo. The company has been a big international player in the coffee game ever since it first stepped foot into the arena, and it has won more matches than it has lost because of its game-changing marketing strategies. Whether we like it or not, the Starbucks siren is crowned with her tiara-halo as the queen of both coffee and socioeconomics.
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