Factors constructing Starbucks Experience in the Trend of Experience Economy: A Qualitative Study
Abstract: Through adopting a qualitative method and building a liner regression model, this paper tries to evaluate factors that construct consuming experience at Starbucks. It depicts that the taste of a drink, background music, and table-chair setting are significant in constructing the Starbucks experience. This paper may provide a reference for catering industry to improve consumer experience in the trend of experience economy.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The trend of experience economy
The conception of experience consumption started from Norris[1] (1941), who claimed the nature of experience consumption to be service rather than product itself. More attention was paid to this area when Future Shock (Alvin, 1970) depicts the upcoming “experiential industry” as an industry where people would allocate high ratio of salaries to live an amazing experience and that is memorable [2]. Pine, J. and Gilmore, J. (1999) further defined experience economy as the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the service economy [3].
1.2 Literature review and topic purpose
In recent years, several researchers have noticed the growth of Starbucks in China, pointing out the consumption of experience at Starbucks. A qualitative research of JI Wei (2008) concluded that Starbucks fully utilized five marketing strategies [4]. The research however, does not study correlation between various factors and the overall Starbucks experience. The research is logically biased for it only studies people who rate experience at Starbucks as good, and the research lacks objectivity in that it depicts the result mainly based on observation and deduction. Zeng Tingting (2013) in her qualitative study also found that the taste of the food, environment, and staff service play important roles in constructing the experience [5]. Nevertheless, apart from failing to take...