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Building A Community Through Coffee
April 20, 2007
Settled in one of the very comfortable overstuffed chairs at the local Starbucks, I noticed something I had not previously.
The place was as crowded as usual, probably 30-plus people either in line to order, waiting for their orders or, like me, sitting, eating, drinking, watching, reading, talking. All very typical but this time I noticed that the demographics of the customers ranged from pre-adolescent girls and boys, complete with mouths full of braces, drinking their double vanilla crème frappuccinos, to a quartet of coffee drinking seniors well into their late ‘60’s, probably mouths full of dentures, as well as all ages in between. A veritable microcosm of the entire population right there in my local Starbucks. Pretty impressive to see an age and gender range as broad as that gathered in one store, particularly one whose primary product is coffee.
That doesn’t happen at any CE store I know or for that matter at clothing, grocery, sporting goods, shoe, jewelry stores or other restaurants or bars or at the same movie or concert, all whose primary products are arguably sexier than coffee. I understand that a broad swath of the population can be found at fast food restaurants, banks, dentists and the like, but in all those cases most consumers visit in spite of the venue rather than as a direct result. Moreover on my visit, these 30-plus pre-teens to seniors all seemed to be just fine with the fact that they were all in the same environment at the same time. How can this be? Well, as with precious few other products, Starbucks has created a community, in this case based on coffee and related products, whose importance transcends the product itself. Now that’s marketing!
No doubt Starbucks understands the value in this, but they don’t appear to have yet figured out how to take maximum advantage of this unique asset beyond the average $4 per person, per visit they now harvest from their customers. Don’t yet know how they can expand upon this tangible asset without (forgive me) spilling the coffee. Hmmmmm. I feel a trip to Seattle coming on.
Posted by Bill Matthies on April 20, 2007 | Comments (0)
