STARBUCKS

According to Bryant Simon, there are three essential reasons for people to pay an extra for a Starbucks coffee.

He says that what we drink has meaning!
We make choices with money we have to show the person we are.
And a coffee, even a starbucks coffee is not really too expensive or too cheap, so everyone can buy a coffee there and benefit from the brand image.

The first reason is functional:
“People need to serve their addictions. Starbucks wouldn’t work if it wasn’t an addictive product.” It’s a legalized caffeine delivering service.
So people need caffeine and starbucks can deliver the product they need. Caffeine is an addictive product, and starbucks becomes a dealer!
American people drink a lot of coffee all the day, so they are more prone to addiction. (We can notice that in France, this is not the same; French people take one coffee in the morning, one at twelve o’clock, and sometimes one in the evening, after a great meal. So the addiction level isn’t the same, and this first reason to buy an “expensive” coffee can not work in France)

The second reason is emotional:
People buy a good coffee to reward themselves after a hard week for example; this is a kind of reward.

“We’re living in a world where we’re desperate for belonging.”
“Starbucks offers this language carefully calibrated”, so if you master this language, you belong to a ‘community’.
And people want and need to belong to a community, this is obvious, we can see that fact with fashion, internet (Facebook, the blogs, etc…)
Theses names, this language brings “connexions” with other people.

The final reason and the most important for Bryant Simon is expressive:
“You buy something because you want to tell something about yourself to the people looking at you.”
“In other words, consumption is a form of performance. And starbucks is staging performances.”
Thanks to Starbucks, you can look like a rich person for the other people.

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