Starbucks Digital Network
It appears that Starbucks is launching its own Starbucks Digital Network, so that when you next connect through the coffeeshop chain’s wifi, you’ll be seeing this:
And it appears that Starbucks is basically just trying to brand itself as the sort of company that provides high quality and localized digital experience to its customers. It is not, apparently, trying to make direct revenue from brands like The New York Times, or Zagat’s, according to Jennifer Van Grove:
Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman sat down with Mashable (
) in advance of the October 20 launch day for a complete tour.
“The vision,” he says, “is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that’s in all of our stores.”
[…]
One would assume, correctly so, that Starbucks has not gone to trouble of providing free Wi-Fi and a premium digital network without thinking about how it could profit by these pricey additions. If we didn’t know better, we’d presume that Starbucks was charging its partners for placement. Instead, as we’ve disclosed before, there’s no money changing hands — unless SDN users make purchases from partners, in which case there is a revenue share.
What it comes down is a matter of choice. Coffee and tea drinkers have a myriad of options, so for Starbucks it’s about motivating the customer to choose its stores, and its digital network content partners by association.
SDN is designed with two key objectives in mind, says Brotman: enhancing the customer’s experience and better engaging customers while they’re in the store.
“Tens of millions of customers are coming in to our stores and logging in to our WiFI on a monthly basis anyways. They’re coming in because we provide this great experience — good music overhead, quality food and coffee and the opportunity to connect with your friends or the baristas … What we hope is that this is a nice complement to that experience.”
Starbucks has to push the brand button in our heads, hard, to justify the premium it is charging for hot brown liquid, and a premier online experience could help a bit, no doubt. We’ll have to see if the experience is actually better than just browsing the open web, though. I am not sure that Starbucks teaming up with Yahoo (their behind the scenes partner) to create a private AOL is the answer however.
I am more intrigued with Starbuck’s foray into wine and beer, which seems obvious but broadens the brand picture in people’s heads.
The mumbo-jumbo about Starbucks supporting the local neighborhoods, by the way, is counterfactual on an economic basis. If they want to support the local economy they should be purchasing goods and services locally, to recycle the money back into the area’s businesses. Instead, Starbucks and other chains centralize a great deal of their buying power, and don’t contribute much locally, compared to local stores:
Loconomics: Support The Local Networks
[…] recent research from the US indicates that between 54 and 58 cents of every dollar spent at a locally-owned retailer stays in that local environment, as they tend to employ a local accountant, a local delivery service, local web designer, local graphic designer and signwriter, local architect, advertise in the local paper, and so on. A national store contributes only 15 cents to the local environment, for every dollar spent, as they tend to centralise those same functions in order to induce greater efficiency.
related articles
- Starbucks launches digital network, with Yahoo (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Starbucks Digital Network: BYOS (Bring Your Own Screen) (paidcontent.org)
- Thank you but no thank you Starbucks. (k1v1n.com)
- Starbucks Partners With Yahoo and Apple (mwd.com)
