Is coffee-shop coffee too expensive?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Oh, I also spent like $90 for a sports jersey.

I'll 'redistribute' one for you for nothing next time I'm in Walthamstow market....

If I had large amounts of money to spend, I'd spend it on travel, artworks and books.

I prefer paying a lot less though- for the books and artwork.


I do hold that good coffee is worth paying for- and I do confess to having treated myself to some Jamaica Blue Mountain one Christmas.

Same with tea and chocolate.

I'm a champagne socialist- I believe everyone should have champagne if they want it.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Oh, I also spent like $90 for a sports jersey.

Well, they have to recoup the Beckham money somehow.

[Imran Siddiqui]

They'll more than recoup the money. Did you read the Forbes article about how Beckham was the person mostly responsible for Real Madrid's sharp uptike in merchandize sales (RM made $600 million in his 4 years there)

[MOBIUS]

Starbucks is for ignorant people with more money than sense...

The coffee is way overpriced and doesn't even taste that fantastic. Most of the other drinks only taste 'good' (not in my opinion!) because of all the junk they stuff in them. Then you have to pay for the newspapers or magazines...

Plus they are aggressive in destroying the competition by saturating the local market with loads of shops so that the others can't compete, or buying their leases from under them etc. There's already twice as many starbucks (6) than all the other 'Big 4' national coffee chains in Cardiff put together, with plans for further expansion...

A local chain of 3 shops has just gone under, but I think they lost by trying to emulate Starbucks.

If I go for a 'Big 4', then I think Caffe Nero has the best combination of quality/price/ambience, otherwise it is the local independents all the time as their coffee is always superior AND cheaper to Starbucks. Indeed it is my duty to support locals like Coffee #1 lest they go under because of Starbucks (I didn't go to Madison's mainly due to poor locations).

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by snoopy369
Separately: Social status is not a zero sum game.

It's a positional good; social status is merely a ranking relative to everyone else. If everyone had a Ferrari, it would no longer be a status symbol, etc. As such there is a fixed "quantity" and any gain by one person comes at the expense of another.

Excellent, young padawan. You are finally coming around to my point of view.

[Kuciwalker]

[Agathon]

I don't see why people are complaining. Starbucks is charging the price the market will bear.

When you pay for a coffee at Starbucks, a lot of your cash is paying the exorbitant rents that Starbucks has to pay to be in convenient locations. That's probably the major reason it is so expensive. IIRC Starbucks has relatively standardized prices, so you may be paying more than you should in some places rather than others (same as McDeath).

If you really want to screw Starbucks, just don't order the fancy coffees. You ever notice how a dash of flavouring in your coffee, or some whipped cream costs a lot more than a regular coffee? Do you really think that the cost in labour and materials is worth the extra 50c or dollar, or maybe more?

Of course it isn't. What Starbucks (and all the others) is doing is engaging in targeted pricing. They know that some people are dumb enough to pay an extra 75c for 2c worth of flavouring and 2 seconds of employee time. Some people are very price sensitive and others are not. What Starbucks is doing is basically selling the same cup of coffee at different prices to different people, because they know that some people will pay more. I know that sounds obscene, but it's been going on for years.

Supermarkets do the same thing. If you wrap something in nice paper, you'd be surprised at how many people will pay half as much again for it.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Have you been reading Thorstein Veblen recently? I've been making that argument on here for years.

[Kuciwalker]

I read a few paragraghs about him a year and a half ago, but it was my impression that conspicuous consumption isn't particularly controversial (at least, its existance), Poly aside.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I read a few paragraghs about him a year and a half ago, but it was my impression that conspicuous consumption isn't particularly controversial (at least, its existance), Poly aside.

His book is about 100 years old. That means he is about twice as progressive as the average Poly fascist.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
Of course it isn't. What Starbucks (and all the others) is doing is engaging in targeted pricing. They know that some people are dumb enough to pay an extra 75c for 2c worth of flavouring and 2 seconds of employee time. Some people are very price sensitive and others are not. What Starbucks is doing is basically selling the same cup of coffee at different prices to different people, because they know that some people will pay more. I know that sounds obscene, but it's been going on for years.

Why exactly should that "sound obscene"? Different people will pay different prices for the same item with different "stuff" (for lack of a better word) added. That's the premise behind hardcover and paperback books, after all. People will pay a lot more to a get a book earlier and in hardcover than they will to wait to get it in paperback. This sort of targetting goes on in every industry and I don't think it's all the obscene.

Now, closet socialists like Kuci might .

[Japher]

I think the hardcover vs. paperback is a bad example, because they are paying for the book now (hardcover) rather than later (paperback). It's the time factor that influences that purchase.

However, I don't think price targeting is obscene, it's smart. If I can get more for the same thing somewhere else then I will do it, depending on the operating costs it takes to deliver the good. Much of what Starbucks offers is convience, consistancy, and brand name identity, their success has nothing to do with the sheit they call coffee.

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by Agathon
I don't see why people are complaining. Starbucks is charging the price the market will bear.

If thick people want to pay more for an inferior product and then boast about it, that's hardly my problem.

What I do have a beef about is their attitude to competition.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Why exactly should that "sound obscene"? Different people will pay different prices for the same item with different "stuff" (for lack of a better word) added. That's the premise behind hardcover and paperback books, after all. People will pay a lot more to a get a book earlier and in hardcover than they will to wait to get it in paperback. This sort of targetting goes on in every industry and I don't think it's all the obscene.

As Japher pointed out, your example is not the same thing as price targeting in coffee shops or supermarkets.

What's obscene is that people don't know they're being had. You have no idea of the number of people who just accept that a squirt of syrup really costs a dollar.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Japher
I think the hardcover vs. paperback is a bad example, because they are paying for the book now (hardcover) rather than later (paperback). It's the time factor that influences that purchase.

However, I don't think price targeting is obscene, it's smart. If I can get more for the same thing somewhere else then I will do it, depending on the operating costs it takes to deliver the good. Much of what Starbucks offers is convience, consistancy, and brand name identity, their success has nothing to do with the sheit they call coffee.

Well, it's the classic example of price targetting. The thing that is different with books is the time factor. The thing that is different with Starbucks coffee over a local coffee shop may be convenience (you can find one anywhere) or consistency (they usually don't screw things up from one cup to another).