"Starbucks experience" is a surrogate living room where customers the company attempts to instill what Starbucks executives refer to as a "club mentality" (Jung, 2002, p. 1). Starbucks executives say that customers want the company to "surprise and delight them" in this club atmosphere (Jung, 2002, p. 1). Cynics contend that Starbucks uses the Starbucks experience to persuade customers to pay $3 for a 50 cent cup of coffee.
Starbucks coffees are not in the necessity category. The selling of Starbucks prepared coffee products as a lifestyle product, however, allows consumers to place a higher value on the utility of Starbucks prepared coffees than they assign to a cup of coffee available at a vending machine or even a cup of coffee prepared at home or in the office. As a lifestyle product and a product that consumers perceive as attaching some degree of social prestige to themselves for being seen to consume the product, Starbu
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