It isn't pride that brought us here. Or is it? We could've stayed home and find ways to meet our goal in updating the outdated, bring anew the old, fix the broken. But yet, we ended up at this place, where a couple weeks ago, I gave the privileged of calling it "my office of the day, and probably the night".
Having discovered we are without the means to get our intentions done, we find ourselves in a "oh-darn" moment. This, nevertheless, gives another opening for another idea. Giving a place for a great mind to spill its thoughts. I'm gonna give way for him, a lawyer, a writer, a brother. Take it away...
How many times whenever you find yourself in a Starbucks coffee shop you say to yourself: "Damn, I could make a better coffee.." If you do, then you gotta ask yourself one of the defining questions of our generation: "Why the hell we go to Starbucks anyway??"
Let me give you an illustration, supposing I come up to you and offering you a Tall Caramel Macchiato served in a non-Starbucks wrapping, delivered by a non-Starbucks waitress, and you would have to drink it in a non green and brown setting with those slow unpopular jazz music that perhaps only a small minority of Starbuckers are aware of; with the exact lack of coffee-taste and even with a Rp. 4,000 - Rp. 5,000 pricing (what a Caramel Macchiato costs Starbucks perhaps), there is a ninety-nine percent chance that you would decline, especially if you are taking a dame with you.
Our infatuation to Starbucks, or any other expensive global franchise or brands, seem to defies the hitherto known laws of economics isn't it?? The rigid supply and demand rule according to which cheap shall raise the demand level have been unconsciously violated by us.
There must be an additional element that Starbucks is selling, beside coffee, that we buy, and I just realized it the moment I found that there is just too much ice in my Caramel Macchiato. That element is, excuse me for being religious or moral: pride, with a capital "P".
There is a big market for pride and most of successful entrepreneurs are those who play in this "pride" industry.
St. Thomas Moore said, pride is not about we having something so much, but it's about we having something that others don't.
In the age before Starbucks in Indonesia, about 20 to 30 years ago; when everybody drink their Indonesian black coffee with the appropriate pricing, drinking coffee in a warkop was not as ritualized as what the twenty first century Indonesian middle class have been doing. Coffee was a democracy for all. A democracy that works. Should the coffee sellers back then dared to raise the price and use Starbucks pricing, it is sure to be a golden ticket to put them out of business.
Then, along came Starbucks. What do they sell: coffee plus a certain degree of satisfaction of buying something that most of Indonesians just can't. Once people see you with a tumbler or a cup of Starbucks with that funny looking green fairy logo attached, you are just detached from the masses.
Afterwards, the Pandora box of market of pride broke loose.
Some of you may not agree with me about this. You might say, "I'm going to Starbucks because it's cozy, it's where I can do my work so I think it's worth the price."
You are joking right? Let's go through it one by one:
1. Cozy: the music is lame and the sofas only occupied about 15% of the space. You can consider yourself lucky if you get the sofa. Most of the time we get the stiff and cold wooden chair but we stayed anyway. So, cozy.. NOT!!
2. Work place: I can guarantee that people will be more productive if they work at their office our house instead of in a dimly lit shop surrounded by alien music to your ears. A work place must be 20% cozy and 80% serious so that one can be serious enough to take deadlines seriously.
Having said so, I rest my case, we are going to Starbucks not because we want to buy a solid and tangible commodity; but instead we are buying an elusive, sometimes monstrous but yet an eternal commodity: PRIDE.
So, the next time you or a friend of yours inviting to buy coffee at Starbucks, just have this simple but liberating reminder, you are buying pride not a cup of coffee.
AVS
Comments
Post a Comment