Starbucks Loyalty Fail

Starbucks knows a thing or two about loyalty. I’m a Gold Card member, and enjoy the free refills as well as the periodic free drinks I accrue by using it. (Green Card members get the refill benefit, but not the free beverage after every 15 purchases. In addition, Gold Card members get a personalized card [...]

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Starbucks, Your Digital Neighborhood?

Starbucks has changed a lot in the last six months, at least in the digital world. First, they finally ditched their paid-only Wifi and went to a free system that requires only one-click acceptance of their terms of use. Then, a few days ago, they launched a new portal page with some of their featured [...]

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Trade-Off by Kevin Maney

Marketable business ideas often have two key characteristics: simplicity, and a way of categorizing products, brands, or companies. The Boston Matrix, for example, launched armies of strategy consultants who neatly fit businesses into buckets labeled, “cash cow,” “star,” “dog,” etc. Kevin Maney’s book Trade-Off has those characteristics as well.

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Caffeinated Branding: Think Inside the Cup

Way back in 2005, in Can Caffeine Brain Boost Help Ad Recall?, I suggested that Starbucks could sell potent ads on their cups. This idea, though tongue-in-cheek in nature, was based on fMRI research that showed caffeine stimulated areas of the brain associated with memory: Dr Florian Koppelstatter of the Medical University Innsbruck, Austria, found [...]

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Anchor Pricing Strategies

Here’s a scenario… You decide to venture into a cell phone store despite your reluctance to deal with a bewildering number of phones, options, plans, along with a confusing price structure. As usual, you find you’ll have to wait a bit for a salesperson. The greeter hands you a card with a big “97″ printed [...]

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Coffee Smell Is All You Need

I’ve written about sensory branding, olfactory marketing, and in particular Starbucks’ attempt to get more coffee aroma into its stores. Now, it seems that all you need to get you going in the morning is a whiff of coffee aroma: Wake up and smell the coffee…yes, it’s the best way to cure tiredness. The researchers [...]

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Simulating the Coffee Drinker’s Nose

Is Scratch ‘n Sniff Starbucks in our future? No industry focuses as much on olfactory marketing as the coffee business. Starbucks recently dumped its breakfast eggs because their smell didn’t pair well with the coffee aroma. Nestle unit Nespresso has not only modified its home brewing equipment to release more enticing smells, they have even [...]

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Starbucks Trying to Cut Buyer Pain

As described many times here at Neuromarketing, paying for a product activates the brain’s pain center, particularly if the price seems too high to the person making the buying decision. Starbucks is the company that taught us that $5 for a cup of coffee (or at least for a skinny mocha peppermint latte with an [...]

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Starbucks vs. McDonald’s: Coffee War Heating Up

Burger giant McDonald’s has the lucrative upscale coffee market dominated by Starbucks clearly in its sights. According to an AP report, McDonald’s Eyes Ballooning Coffee Market, After the success of its upgraded drip coffee – which even managed to snag a thumbs-up from testers at Consumer Reports earlier this year – the fast food chain [...]

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Sensory Marketing to Jolt Espresso Sales

One of the keys to the phenomenal success of Starbucks has been that its stores offer a consistent and appealing sensory experience. The music, colors, and lighting are all important, but clearly the wonderful coffee aroma is what dominates one’s senses on entering a Starbucks outlet. I enjoy brewing Starbucks coffee at home, too, but [...]

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