Coffee and Conformity
I was trying to figure out which courses I should take at Temple University this semester so I took the requisite step of googling all the profs that were leading interesting sounding classes. A video of Bryant Simon presenting a lecture on the ethnography of Starbucks popped up.
After watching the clip I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel like applauding Starbucks for cleverly branding itself. The fact that Starbucks has found a way to insinuite itself into so many peoples’ lives speaks highly of the company’s ability to fill a demand (and even create a demand when none existed prior). I’m a confirmed capitalist and am loathe to condemn a company that has been so creative in developing a market. Indeed, I rather wish that all companies had the ability to predict what I want when even I don’t know what I want…it would certainly making shopping less of a chore!
On the other hand, I feel slightly embarrassed at how easily we consumers have been played. The idea that we unconciously bow to corporate propaganda is somehow distasteful. Indeed, none of the reasons for buying expensive Starbucks coffee listed by Simon are motives that I would be proud to embrace: 1) nicotine addiction, 2) discovering a communal identity or sense of belonging, and 3) expressing trendiness. Aren’t we then unthinking fools who mindlessly do what we are manipulated to do?
I doubt there is a facile answer.
On another note for all you fellow BJU-ans, about 12 minutes into the clip when Simon shows the image of quote #43 on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup dig around in the recesses of your memory and recall a 2006 chapel statement from the newly annointed President Stephen Jones. (For those of you unfamiliar with the incident Stephen Jones announced that Bob Jones would no longer serve Starbucks coffee because of the same offending quotation.) Simon mentions Baylor University’s protest over the pro-homosexual sentiment in the quotation. He used Starbucks acquiescence to Baylor on the matter as proof that Baylor wants to portray a edgy intellectual image without actually alienating consumers by being overly controversial (Starbucks is a for profit company, not an advocacy group). I wonder why Starbucks then reacted in the opposite manner when Bob Jones asked for the same consideration the following year.
I suspect that there may be a significant difference between what Baylor and Bob Jones demanded. Baylor simply wanted Starbucks to pull the offending corrugated cup from the Baylor Starbucks. It appears that Bob Jones University wanted Starbucks to pull the cup entirely. Starbucks may have attempted to appease evangelicals (they certainly don’t want to anger a third of the potential coffee drinkers in the country!) by putting a quotation by Rick Warren on their cups in 2006 (quote #43 came out in 2005). Apparently the company felt that the counter-balance should off-set evangelical concerns. I hypothesize that Starbucks was willing to assuage Baylor’s limited concerns, but was willing to cut its losses when it came to Bob Jones’ broader demand; this proves a logical decision when considered in light of the philosophy outlined by Bryant Simon.
So what courses did you decide to take?
That was interesting. My guess is that the extent to which most of us are unconsciously influenced by marketing messages is much greater than we begin to imagine.
I’m in a research seminar with David Farber. The goal is to produce a publishable article on a topic in the 1960s-80s; I’m considering doing something on Carl McIntyre and political culture. I’ve also enrolled in Bryant Simon’s Intro course.
This may be stretching the verse too far out of context, but I do wonder how our often unthinking submission to marketing fits with the Biblical command to be both in the world but not of it.
You’re being a bit too credulous. First, what Simon calls expressiveness, and what economists call signaling, is a strong driver of many if not most decisions. Second, Starbucks has always been explicitly about extending coffee culture, not just selling brewed concoctions. Third, though I do think consumers self-deceive about why they buy certain things, it’s wrong to characterize them in this case as being “duped.” Consumers are in the best position to judge which decision will satisfy them the most, and even if they never acknowledge that they drink Starbuck’s because it signals affiliation and identity and not because of the rich arabica beans, I don’t see any tragedy, just normal human foibles.
BTW Carl McIntire spelled his name with an “i”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_McIntire
I talked to two Starbucks employees yesterday and both mentioned that Starbucks corporate trains their staff to think of Starbucks as the “Third Place”: home, work, Starbucks. Ideally their customers will organize their lives around these three communities. Now I have no real objection to the idea of Starbucks as a community. Indeed, coffeehouses once acted as intellectual conduits (I’m thinking Samuel Johnson, Boswell, etc).
But I’m bothered by the fact that my decision-making is often unconsciously influenced. I’d like to think that I carefully weigh the evidence and my options before deciding to do something, whether that action is to choose a graduate school or pick a brand of coffee. Of course intellectually I know that this ideal is unrealistic, but I’m idealistic enough that I’m somewhat perturbed when I find out how little concious choice I really exercise.
You may find this obnoxious, but I’m going to insert marginalia that may or may not be germaine to the debate. When considering Starbucks as the “third place,” I recalled another triad (an authoritarian one) I’d seen diagrammed on chalkboards: family, church, civil government. Although insufficient parallels, both triads loosely dilineate humankind’s (idealized) allegiance.
Recently, I found two references to the loose cultural parallel many see between the church’s role and Starbuck’s. The film “What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church?” parabolically explores the antithetical, marketing parallel between these two sources of satisfaction. Ironic in its juxtaposition, an NPR essay delves into the comlimentary, if discomforting, roles these two entities represent to a skeptical observer. Needless to say, approach each with wide-eyed discernment.
I appreciate the point of the Church/Starbucks video, but American churches, specifically protestant churches, are in fact run like businesses to a large extent. I (of course) think economics has a lot to say about this.
I think the difference in religious participation between America and Western Europe can, for example, be explained to a great extent by the different markets in place. As Adam Smith put it the Wealth of Nations long ago:
“The teachers of [religion]…, in the same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country many entitle them…. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to be much greater in the former situation than the latter. In this respect the teachers of new religions have always had a considerable advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems of which the clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up the fervour of the faith and devotion in the great body of the people….”
An economist named Larry Iannaccone has done some fascinating work on this subject. He points out, inter alia, that religious participation in the US was quite low before the Constitution was ratified (and abolished state support for churches), and that the religions which then thrived were not the old subsidized strains but new denominations like the Baptists and Wesleyans.
Great podcast with him here:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/10/the_economics_o_7.html
I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to Iannaccone’s talk yet, but having read Patricia Bonomi’s “Under the Cope of Heaven” I am suspicious of your/his interpretation of American religious life prior to the end of establishment.