The Starbucks Brandscape and the Discursive Mapping of Local Coffee Shop Cultures

Craig J. Thompson Zeynep Arsel

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Department of Marketing 975 University Ave. Madison, WI 53706

1This study introduces the concept of the hegemonic brandscape to analyze a particular

nexus of marketplace dynamics. The cultural discourses that surround Starbucks and the

servicescape structures that the so-called Starbucks revolution has established as the linchpins of

a desirable coffee shop experience exert a systematic influence on the socio-cultural milieu of

local coffee shops, regardless of whether these shops are positioned as countercultural havens or

a third-place hangout for middle-class professionals. We identify two types of local coffee shop

patron who use the anti-Starbucks discourse in different ways and who imbue qualitatively

different kinds of personal, social, and moral significance to their coffee shop preferences. Local

coffee shop culture also provides access to contextualized cultural capital that mitigates some

expected class-based differences in consumers’ aesthetic tastes. We discuss the implications of

this cultural conceptualization for prior research on consumer-brand relationships, brand image,

and oppositional brand loyalty.

2If contemporary commentators are even remotely in the cultural ballpark, postmodernity

is nothing less than the age of the brand. Brands are heralded as the key to successful marketing

strategies and the very lifeblood of economic prosperity (Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000; Keller

2000; Leonard 1997); brands are now analyzed as potent symbolic resources for the construction

of personal and communal identities (Fournier 1998; Holt 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001;

McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig 2002); and brands are often vilified as all-consuming

ideological forces, colonizing cultural and economic life (Bové and Dufour 2001; Frank 1997;

Klein 1999). Regardless of their salubrious or scurrilous sentiments, these pronouncements

attribute social significance to brands that goes well beyond conventional notions of brand image

and brand equity. Brands are essential threads that run throughout the fabric of popular culture,

the new economic order, personal identity, and social affiliations.

These postmodern paeans to the brand are indicative of the economic shift from the

modernist machinations of heavy capitalism toward the flexible, mobile, and dynamic circuits of

light capitalism (Bauman 2000). Beyond all the bubblicious hype that fueled the dot.com boom,

light capitalism is distinguished by its view of production as a secondary activity to be

outsourced to the greatest extent possible so that organizational resources can be devoted to

creating brand value. Marketing-savvy corporations are now in the business of creating and

nurturing brands that provide consumers compelling, captivating, and evocative meanings. As

trenchantly summarized by Klein (1999, p. 23), “with this wave of brand mania comes a new

breed of businessman, one who will proudly inform you that brand X is not a product but a way

of life, an attitude, a set of values, a look, an idea.”

In this hegemony-r-us world of global brands, some enjoy more celebrity and suffer more

notoriety than others; think Nike, think Disney, think McDonald’s, think Coca-Cola, and think

3Starbucks. The marketing success of Starbucks is legion. The Starbucks revolution has inspired

a dramatic resurgence in American coffee consumption and made hanging out in coffee shops a

fashionable leisure pursuit among the youthful arbiters of cool. Starbucks’ model of café cool

has proven readily exportable on a global scale, sweeping through Canada, China, Japan,

Taiwan, Britain, much of continental Europe, with bold plans to enter coffee mecca itself

(Holmes 2002). Starbucks conquers Rome; grande or vente, Brutu?

Starbucks’ market domination coupled with its increasingly aggressive expansion strategy—

which the company acknowledges leads to a significant rate of cannibalization among its own stores

(Holmes 2002)—also make this brand a lightening rod for protest and criticism. Starbucks is a rally-

the-troops symbol for all the rapacious excesses and homogenizing effects attributed to

globalization. Anti-Starbucks slogans and narratives pervade the internet and local retail trade. In the

authors’ city of residence, for example, several local coffee shops do brisk business in “friends don’t

let friends drink Starbucks” bumper stickers. One does not have to look very long before seeing pins

and T-shirts brandishing culture jamming versions of the Starbucks logo that have been poached

from the virtual plebiscite of cyberspace (see Figure 1).

This paper concerns the extensive network of discourses, consumption practices, and

consumption spaces organized around the Starbucks brand. If you frequent local coffee shops; if

you work in or manage a coffee shop that is a local, regional or national competitor; or if you

seek to study the experiences of local coffee shop consumption, there is no escaping Starbucks.

Per this last point, our investigation began with the goal of understanding the consumption

experiences and meanings that emerge in this form of third-place (Oldenburg 1989) retailing.

Across interviews with customers, workers, and owners, their expressed understanding of the

local establishment and its clientele was formed in relation to perceptions of Starbucks and its

4typified customers. As our study unfolded, we became further sensitized to the staging of local

coffee shop servicescapes (Sherry 1998) in relation to Starbucks’ trademark décor, ambiance,

product offerings, and the boundless enthusiasm of its baristas. In some cases, these stagings are

patently emulative, and in others, they are defiantly oppositional, but none are oblivious to

Starbucks’ look and feel. As we said, there is no escaping Starbucks. What is the theoretical

significance of its dominant position?

Starbucks as a Hegemonic Brandscape

Brandscape is a flat-out phat, dazzlingly de rigueur, postmodern sobriquet that rolls off

the tongues of marketing consultants and cultural critics alike, though carrying very different

connotations. The management spin is exemplified by General Mills, which proudly promotes its

portfolio of brands as a unified brandscape; that is, a symbolic space that is a familiar and

comfortable home for consumers the world over. This notion of the brandscape is more

effectively put into practice by so-called experience economy retailers (such as the Disney Store)

and themed restaurants (such as ESPN Zone) whose atmospherics enable consumers to inhabit

worlds normally experienced only through mass media forums (Pine and Gilmore 1999). For

critics of global capitalism (see Frank 2000; Klein 1999), the brandscape refers to an ominous

totality of global brands that saturate everyday life and enmesh consumers in a web of desire-

inducing capitalist imagery.

John Sherry (1998, p. 112) advances an anthropological view of the brandscape that

places considerably more emphasis on consumers’ active constructions of meaning:

The brandscape is a material and symbolic environment that consumers build with marketplace products, images, and messages, that they invest with local meaning, and whose totemic significance largely shapes the adaptation consumers make to the modern world. Brandscaping is one of the ways consumption is actively produced by consumers.

5 Our conceptualization of the hegemonic brandscape gleans ideas from these diverse

definitions. From the corporate definition, we borrow the idea that the brandscape is a central

locus of consumer-marketer relationships and that the terms of this relationship are shaped by the

experiential benefits and symbolic meanings offered by the brand. From Sherry’s consumer-

centric definition, we poach the twin ideas that brands have a spatial dimension through which its

symbolic meanings are materially represented and that consumers rework brandscape meanings

in relation to their lives and personal experiences. From the critical perspective, we take the idea

that a brandscape is a field of ideological relationships that situate consumers’ actions and

personalizing interpretations. Thus, consumption experiences that consumers actively produce

are infused by ideological meanings not of their direct making.

Our position is that the Starbucks complex of imagery, décor, discourses (of both a

promotional and critical variety), product offerings, hybrid Euro-American ambiance, and other

trademark features exert a structuring influence on metropolitan coffee shops and the

consumption experiences that they afford to their clientele. The Starbucks brandscape extends

beyond its corporate basis: rather, it is a diffuse and loosely coupled network of coffee shops of

various sizes, serving diverse marketing niches. All inevitably occupy a competitive space that

has been mapped by dimensions of Starbucks’ servicescape and the cultural discourses that

imbue a heightened degree of social, cultural, and political significance to this iconic brand.

From McDonaldization to Starbuckification

The popular critique of Starbucks as an exploitive merchant of global homogenization

echoes many of the vituperations that constitute the McDonaldization thesis (Ritzer 1993).

Expanding on Max Weber’s writings on bureaucratic rationality, Ritzer posits that a system of

6rationalizing processes pioneered by McDonald’s—based on principles of efficiency,

calculability, standardization, predictability, and technological control—have become the

dominant logic of global capitalism, imposing its rationalizing (and dehumanizing) structure

upon nearly every sector of cultural and social life in the United States, with the rest of the world

following suit at an alarming rate (see Ritzer 1998).

O’Neil (1999, p. 53) derides the McDonaldization thesis for being a “McTheory” that

markets an amalgam of popular opinions about the calamitous consequences of global capitalism

as a formal sociological analysis. However, this compatibility between popular opinion and

academic critiques of globalization is very much by design. Ritzer (1993) makes it quite clear

that his McDonaldization thesis is an exhortation for consumers to resist the dawning McCulture.

Furthermore, many critical analyses of globalization’s putative ills are oriented around an

activist, social change agenda (e.g., Frank 2000; Klein 1999). Accordingly, these social critics

make a concerted effort to popularize their ideas beyond the ivory tower.

Cultural anxieties over the deleterious effects of globalization have heightened consumer

consciousness about problems of environmental degradation, worker displacement, and labor

conditions. This critical discourse on globalization has become intertwined with the cultural

meanings of coffee. “Coffee is a very political commodity” (Roseberry 1996, p. 774), and the

realpolitik of coffee production and distribution has also become an integral dimension of the

coffee shop experience. Coffee shop political consciousness consumption is also steeped in a

variation of the McDonaldization thesis. In this popular cultural discourse, Starbucks is

demonized for driving out local (and presumably diverse) coffee shops, imposing a sterile and

standardized culture upon local communities, and seducing unsuspecting consumers with an

inauthentic simulation of a real community gathering place. These criticisms further map onto a

7distinction between the global and the local, with the latter being the morally privileged term.

In recent years, a cadre of social theorists has challenged the viability and theoretical

utility of this seemingly self-evident distinction between heterogeneous local cultures and the

homogenizing forces of globalization (Ger and Belk 1996; Hannerz 1996; Wilk 1995). However,

the global-local dichotomy is quite central to the meanings our participants use to understand

their coffee shop loyalties, preferences, dislikes, and more strongly, antipathies. As our

participants shifted from general reflections to more specific experiences and perceptions of local

coffee shops and Starbucks, their narratives become complicated by a series of dialectical

tensions—such as between aesthetic authenticity and a commodified fabrication or pretense—

and feelings of moral ambivalence. These tensions reflect that their perceptions and experiences

of coffee shop patronage unfold in a dialectically structured socio-cultural space. In this

dialectical zone, local versus global polarities still provides a primary cultural system of meaning

for consumers. The dialectics of Starbucks’ brandscape, however, necessitate that consumers

undertake considerable interpretive work to align their orienting critique of Starbucks with their

experiences of consuming local diversity via coffee shops.

METHOD

The data for this study were collected over a two-year period. We used a multimethod,

multisite data collection strategy. Our primary data consists of phenomenological interviews

(Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989) and supplemental data provided through netnography

(Kozinets 2002) and field notes from extended observations at several local coffee shops. A

profile of our 36 interview participants is provided in Table 1.

A team of graduate students who had been trained in phenomenological interviewing

(Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989) by the senior author conducted the initial wave of

8

interviews. These interviews gathered insights from regular patrons of local coffee shops in one

large metropolitan city and one “latte town” (Brooks 2000). To avoid imposing any local-global

chain polarizations, participants were told that the study concerned their experiences and

perceptions of coffee shops. Each interview session began with a set of “grand tour” questions

(McCracken 1988) about participants’ personal backgrounds, interests, and life goals and then

focused upon their experiences of local coffee shops.

Interviews were clustered around six specific coffee shops that ranged from those that

were militantly anti-Starbucks, fashioned around a countercultural, anticorporate, bohemian

motif, to those that evinced a polished aesthetic very much like Starbucks’. Regular patrons of

these primary shops also frequented other coffee shops, and thus the interviews also elicited the

participants’ perceptions and evaluations of the broader local coffee shop scene. Photographs and

fieldnotes from the six primary coffee shops sites supplemented our interview texts.1

We interpreted this qualitative data using a hermeneutic approach (Thompson 1997). In

this process, provisional understandings are formed, challenged, revised, and further developed

through an iterative movement between individual transcripts and the emerging understanding of

the entire set of textual data. A key inflection point in our interpretation concerns the

unanticipated salience of Starbucks as cultural category (e.g., D’Andrade 1990) that anchors our

participants’ understanding of their experiences of local coffee shops and their patronage

motivations. We then began to dialectically tack between these emic meanings and the broader

discourse surrounding the Starbucks brandscape that circulates in popular culture. Eventually we

synthesized these emic meanings and etic categories.

1 The names of the local coffee shops, their owners, employees, and patrons are pseudonyms.

9To further challenge and elaborate upon this provisional analysis, we collected

additional data from two sources. We interviewed a set of consumers who were Starbucks

aficionados and for whom Starbucks is a clearly preferred to any local coffee shop alternative.

Aside from gaining comparative insights from pro-Starbucks consumers, we were particularly

interested to see if the same structural dimensions, such as aesthetic ambiance, that organized our

interviews with local coffee shop patrons emerged among Starbucks patrons. Second, we

interviewed regulars of a local coffee shop (Revolution House) that seemed to embody many

aspects of the anti-Starbucks, “authentically local” ideal described by our participants.

For the Revolution House interviews, we gained the assistance of the owners/managers

and placed a notice in the weekly coffee shop newsletter asking for volunteers. All of these

interviews were conducted in the principal coffee shop and ranged from one to two hours in

duration. All participants were assured that any identifying information would be kept

confidential. These interviews were also supplemented by participant observation. The second

author spent time in this coffee shop observing and interacting with customers and becoming

immersed in its ambiance. These visits also allowed this researcher to develop rapport with the

coffee shop owners and employees.

The Meaning of the Local in the Starbucks’ Brandscape

In their study of entrepreneurial expatriates, Thompson and Tambyah (1999) found that

the semantic category of the local functioned as a valorized ideal. For their participants, the

cosmopolitan goal of experiencing the host culture in its authentic form, as opposed to a

commodified spectacle created for the tourist economy, hinged upon making social connections

with locals and finding local places (e.g., shops, restaurants, neighborhoods) that tourists seldom

frequented were viewed as the keys to experiencing the host culture in its authentic form.

10Reciprocally, the symbolic distinction between the local and global enabled these individuals

had to assuage nagging concerns that their mere presence in the host country, as expat

professionals, indicated that the forces of globalization had already contaminated their ideal of

local authenticity.

A thematically similar rhetorical use of the local is also manifest in our coffee shop

interviews. In this case, the maligned homogenizing forces of globalization are metonymically

represented through the Starbucks’ brand. Our participants’ coffee shop preferences function as a

form of self-definition anchored by innumerable contrasts to typical Starbucks’ customers. We

also find that the identity constructions of local coffee shop patrons are clustered around two

distinctive orientations, which we term as café flâneurs and oppositional localists. Both types of

local coffee shop patron employed complex narrative constructions, replete with nuanced

distinctions and rationales, to sustain their differing idealizations and meanings of local coffee

shops in the face of several salient ambiguities and dialectical tensions.

Figure 2 offers a representation of the key relationships identified through our study. We

introduce it at this juncture to orient readers to the logic of our findings and mode of

presentation. In the following sections, we will develop in more detail each aspect of the model.

Global structures of common difference/anti-Starbucks discourse

From a dialectical perspective, the multifaceted phenomenon of globalization is more

accurately characterized as a process of glocalization (Robertson 1995); that is, a generative

process in which the continual interpenetration among local and global cultural and economic

forms creates new hybrid structures. The local always harbors global elements and vice versa.

Wilk’s (1995) concept of global structures of common difference offers a means to put this

11dialectical view into analytic practice, and we find it quite useful for explicating the key

structural features of the Starbucks brandscape.

Global structures of common difference organize and even promote cultural differences

along specific dimensions. Thus, globalization is “a hegemony of form not content, which

celebrates particular kinds of diversity while submerging, deflating, or suppressing others”

(Wilk, 1995, p. 118). Global structures map local cultures in terms of salient dimensions while

allowing considerable variation in their localized manifestations.

The structures of common difference that emanate from Starbucks’ success correspond to

the characteristics of third-places detailed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg (1989). Third-places are

public spaces that exist between the formality and seriousness of the work sphere and the privacy

and familial intimacy of the domestic sphere. Third-places are conducive to informal

conversations, forging casual friendships and they are spaces where patrons can imbibe a

comforting sense of community, camaraderie, and social connection.

Though Oldenburg argues that corporate chains are inherently antithetical to genuine

third-places, the success of Starbucks is due to its skill at creating a third-place ambiance on a

global scale (Schmitt 1999; Shields 2002). In effect, Starbucks has standardized and mass-

marketed the upscale, European-influenced ambiance of the Seattle coffee shop scene—the

quintessential latte town (Brooks 2000). While this ambiance emerged from Seattle’s white-

collar, professional milieu, it has been despatialized and diffused throughout the United States

and now the world, with rival copycat chains, such as Seattle’s Best, further propagating a

simulated Seattle scene within coffee shop culture.

Metropolitan coffee shops are organized around several readily discernible global

structures of common difference that dialectically link Starbucks to its local competitors. These

12include prominent displays of visual art; background music that can be classified as either

sophisticated (in the high culture sense), hip, or in some way countercultural but certainly not

Top 40 mainstream; and a limited but hedonically rich menu featuring oversized gourmet

muffins, oversized cookies, foccacias, bagels, and epicurean sandwiches. The interior décor

should convey a sense of warmth coupled with a distinctive aesthetic flair. Coffee shops have

also been historically linked to intellectual engagement and cultural enrichment (Oldenburg

1989; Sherry 1995). As a result, a selection of arts-oriented media and newspapers, including

prestigious dailies such as the New York Times, are standard coffee shop accoutrements. These

edifying reading materials forge a symbolic connection to the broader worlds of art, politics, and

community events and hence can stimulate third-place conversations. Meanings of cosmopolitan

worldliness (as well as an appeal to peasant chic) are reinforced via signifiers of the international

coffee trade—such as maps showing the world’s different coffee growing areas, images of

indigenous coffee farmers, and bulk coffee displays, often in archaic burlap bags.

These global structures of common difference can accommodate a wide range of

implementations. In our sample of coffee shops, some effected an adamantly countercultural

bohemian stance via risqué art; musical selections from hip indie (i.e., small independent) labels

of the techno, hardcore, or alt-country variety; furnishings exuding a seemingly unplanned,

secondhand shop aura; and a staff brandishing tattoos, body piercing, avant hair styles, and other

subversive sartorial statements. Other coffee shops appealed to an upscale new class sensibility

that Brooks (2000) has christened as boboism (i.e. a postmodern blend of bourgeois and

bohemian values). Among bobo coffee shops, the aesthetic mix is constituted by light jazz, and

tasteful art—black and white stills, and classical landscapes—perhaps spiced with some abstract

impressionism. In terms of cultural content (and the dramaturgy of the staff), bobo coffee shops

13more closely resemble the Starbucks chain than the countercultural alternatives. Accordingly,

displays of aesthetic refinement take clear precedence over any interests in defying mainstream

sensibilities. Yet, bobo-ish and countercultural coffee shops operate along the same structural

dimensions, and these commonalities quickly enable their patrons to assess the similarities and

most importantly the differences between their preferred local shop and Starbucks.

The anti-Starbucks discourse. Starbucks’ stratospheric growth and market dominance has

also given rise to a countervailing discourse that now permeates coffee shop culture. The anti-

Starbucks discourse is a multi-faceted one having cultural, material, and hedonic threads. The

cultural thread berates this brand for displacing the diversity of authentic coffee shops with a

soul-numbing aesthetic homogeneity and sanitized versions of the creative arts. The material

critique associates Starbucks’ corporate practices with a nexus of deleterious effects on the local

coffee trade, the environment, and the economic standing of coffee growers. In recent years,

Starbucks has also come under fire for using rBGH modified milk products, thereby linking the

brand to consumer anxieties over genetically modified foods and giving rise to yet another

culture jamming play on the brand name: Frankenbucks. Starbucks is also widely assailed on

websites devoted to coffee connoisseurship for over roasting its beans (e.g., Charbucks) (see

Kozinets 2002) and for debasing the espresso experience.

Starbucks invests considerable marketing effort toward countering these charges and has

even altered its product line, offering limited selections of fair trade coffees and organic milk in

some markets. However, Starbucks critics dismiss these changes as cynical marketing ploys that

are relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of Starbucks’ global operations.

For our analytic purposes, the issue is not the relative merits of these critical charges or

corporate rebuttals. Rather, the point is that the anti-Starbucks discourse has become as much a

14part of coffee shop culture as an espresso served in a demitasse with biscotti on the side.

Whereas most of our participants are not explicitly aware of the global structures of common

difference that are intrinsic to the staging of a coffee shop, preferring to interpret their favorite

local shops as unique, they are quite attuned to the anti-Starbucks discourse; it functions as a

collectively shared narrative that infuses the meanings through which they understand their

experiences of local coffee shop consumption.

Café Flâneurs/The Buzz

Scott: I don’t really talk to too many people when I’m here. I’ll read the papers and just kind of watch people. You’re not trying to listen but you can’t help it. And, some of the stories, you just feel so bad. Or you feel like, hey, you kind of deserved it. I mean, what did you expect, you didn’t show up for work and you got caught smoking pot the day you came back. You deserve to be fired. You know, or whatever. The sad stories, like people dying and people feeling bad. You know, you could write a story, you really could

The image of the urban flâneur or stroller has been intimately linked to the experiences of

metropolitan life ever since 19th century writer Charles Baudelaire’s reflections on the Parisian

urban landscape (see Featherstone 1991). The urban flâneur (and flâneuse) is a pleasure seeker

who becomes immersed in the hyperkinetic, sensory-saturated world of the large metropolis,

with little regard for time, schedules, or instrumental outcomes (Benjamin 1973). Defying

dominant modernist mandates for the productive and efficient use of time, the urban flâneur

strolls the city, leisurely taking in its cacophony of sights and sounds for the pleasure they offer

rather than hurrying to a destination or even engaging in the purposive activity of shopping. The

urban flâneur thrives on the perpetual motion of the crowd and the continual buzz of

conversations but he/she does so in a voyeuristic manner, observing rather than directly

participating in the unfolding drama of the street. Importantly, the urban flâneur is self-

15consciously taking up an idealized identity position that is understood as being distinct from

others in the crowd.

Through the café flâneur orientation, local coffee shop patrons also create a space where

they can linger in the moment, at least temporarily suspending the press to squeeze more

productivity out of their day, and where they can act upon the paradoxical consumer desire to be

out-in-public while retaining a detached anonymity. Rather than seeking an experience of

communal solidarity, café flâneurs revel in the social spectacle of the coffee shop crowd,

viewing themselves more as an appreciative audience than participants. Several of our café

flâneurs are engaging in an explicit form of identity play, such as being a writer or a poet, that

they feel stands apart from their work-a-day and family lives and that is greatly facilitated by the

buzz of local coffee shops.

Our emic theme—the buzz—profiles a range of meanings that are sought through café

flâneurship. The buzz theme is constituted by two experiential dimensions, which are

analytically distinguishable but in practice are intertwined and mutually supportive. The social

buzz refers to the energy and entertainment that our participants gain from being in this dynamic

public space, observing others, and eavesdropping on conversations. The aesthetic buzz refers to

the feeling of creative inspiration that café flâneurs gain from being in a social space possessing

a stimulating and interesting décor, music, and visual art.

The buzz also has a material foundation that needs to be acknowledged. Third-places

typically involve the consumption of social lubricants such as beer, spirits, or coffee (Oldenburg

1989). Many of our participants refer to the stimulating effects of caffeine. This chemical

backdrop contributes to the overall ambiance of local coffee shops and our participants’

experiences of being energized and creatively inspired by these third-places. Coffee also

16contributes to this positive feeling in a more symbolic manner. As discussed by Sherry (1998),

coffee carries cultural meanings that sacralize these third-places, rendering these establishments

as distinct from the quotidian flow of everyday. Coffee is understood both as an “anodyne and a

stimulant” (Sherry 1995, p. 358) and, hence, public spaces where coffee is the de facto

sacramental beverage can be experienced as places to relax and to become immersed in a

dynamic and enlivening social world. In sum, the buzz afforded by local coffee shops emerges

from this confluence of the physiological, the social, the aesthetic, and the symbolic.

The social aspect of the buzz is nicely illustrated in the following quote from Patrick who

like many of our participants, seldom makes coffee at home, despite the convenience and cost

savings offered by home brewing:

I: Do you make coffee at home? Patrick: No. Never. Isn’t that odd? I don’t even own a coffee machine. Because, I mean,

that’s the whole thing. I drink coffee because I want to be out among people. Like my mom bought me an espresso machine three, four, five years ago. I don’t even remember. I gave it away the day she left [after a visit]. I don’t drink coffee. I meet people. That’s the whole f*ckin’ point. The draw for me is the people there, contact with other people. It’s not like I go into a cafè and like, you know, start hitting on people or, you know, ask them to go out to the movies with me. But it’s a way of communicating with someone when you’re lonely.

Patrick’s concept of being “lonely” requires some explication. He is the owner of a small

bookstore, married with two young children. In this sense, his life is infused by a variety of

social relationships. However, Patrick’s sense of the social has been heavily shaped by his tenure

as an exchange student in Germany. Most striking for Patrick had been the sense of being in a

place where complete strangers from different cultural worlds can strike up a conversation:

I: Do you have a favorite café? Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. Café Einstein in Berlin. Yeah, unbelievable café. It’s on the

Friedrich Strasse, which has been since Berlin was founded the sort of the main

17pedestrian street. It’s a beautiful street with these huge sycamore trees and the wide boulevard style. But anyway, the reason why I say it was the absolute best café is that it was very great in a lot of ways. It had a really interesting clientele. But it also had a fantastic ambiance. It had these, you know, basically all glass on two sides. And they had the blinds, right? You know, the huge, heavy slatted blinds that sort of allowed the sunlight to filter in. And they had great coffee drinks, too. They made a really good cup of coffee. They had gorgeous pictures, photographs really and you go in, you get the service by these fantastic Germans. And there were papers hanging on the walls from just about every language, El Pais [a Spanish newspaper] or, you know, the Daily Telegraph, “Holzfranz” [a newspaper from Holland], I mean, this is great, when I want to read Dutch, I’ll come in here and read the Dutch newspapers, and when I want to practice on my French, I’ll read Le Monde, or if I want to do the German, you know? Everything except the English newspaper. That’s the one thing I never wanted to do. Why read English when you’ve got all these other choices on the wall… And it had a really mixed clientele. You get the tourists who are there because it’s the Friedrich Strasse, but you also get, well, for example, I got chatted up one day by an Austrian businessman. He was from Vienna. So, a Viennese guy is sitting here and drinking his coffee, with a handlebar mustache and a shaved head, looking like he could be in a pickelhaube. Do you know what a pickelhaube is? One of those helmets with the little points on it.

For Patrick, participating in the buzz of the local coffee shop offers a means to simulate

this by gone experience of cosmopolitan worldliness that he feels is lacking in his everyday

routine ordered by the demands of parenthood and running a small business. Like our other

participants, Patrick views distinctiveness as the defining trait of a good coffee shop. When

commenting on his least favorite German coffee shops, Patrick identifies a “nondescript” chain

that evokes an association with Starbucks:

Patrick: God, it was a chain, it was kind of a nondescript... It wasn’t Starbucks, although by then Berlin had started to get Starbucks. But, um, it was a local, like a local German chain the opposite direction from Einstein.

Our café flâneurs view Starbucks as a conservative, relatively banal cultural space that

caters to an equally bland corporate clientele. In diametric contrast, local coffee shops are

constructed as forums for the expression of individuality and alternative (i.e., noncorporate and

nonsuburban) sensibilities:

18Frank: Well, yeah, a place like this is unique which I like. It very much caters to the

population around here. It’s very, you know, it’s comforting to somebody who lives in the suburbs. It’s got an artsy sort of thing going. It’s a special place that way. It’s like Eureka Joe’s is more for the alternative-minded person living on the East Side. As opposed to Starbucks, you know. It’s kind of mass. It’s still the same corporate kind of cookie-cutter type of place. I don’t see the same uniqueness. A place like this has more personality.

In discussing their preferences for local coffee shops, café flâneurs seldom invoke the

politics of consumption rationales that predominate among oppositional localists. Rather, their

preferences hinge upon voyeuristic, hedonic, and identity play considerations:

Laura: I try to avoid Starbucks. If I’m staying somewhere for a while, I’ll try to look for the other places. There was a coffee shop that was directly across the street from my house that I was staying at, visiting some friends in San Francisco, and it was called Simple Pleasures. It was a real café. They served Guinness beer and different sandwiches, and coffees. They had some regulars. There was some guy, he would sit there every day. My friend and I we’re like this “guy is there again,” like for a week. “What is he doing? He’s got to be on unemployed!” He was totally loving life, just sitting back, with his shirt open usually, just having his coffee. Long blonde hair, kind of stringy, sitting there. He was so funny, because it was like him and his buddies, three other guys, just hanging out. We would go there and they were there, you know. We enjoyed it.

Cooper: I consider myself a corporate misfit. And what I mean by that is I once worked in

a very corporate, very professional setting. And I did not like it. I prefer a more open casual environment. So I look at Starbucks being corporate and I don’t like that. It feels stiff, it doesn’t feel comfortable. I don’t feel like I can be myself there. Java Jive is very different. Java Jive is quirky. You have different people who work there. The clientele is very funky. There are lots of different people that hang out there. I can do Java Jive.

Café flâneurs view local coffee shops as offering a more distinctive ambiance and hence

as providing a more engaging and stimulating buzz. Yet, their aesthetic censures of Starbucks are

often tempered by an appreciation for Starbucks’ high level of service quality and the comfort

offered by its familiar settings:

Carie: I’m not a Starbucks fan, just because I’m not like “corporate Starbucks world.” Although I have like, I was in New Zealand at Christmastime and, you know, I found a Starbucks in Auckland and that was the place, you know. More because it was kind of a more comfortable setting, you know, you’re comfortable with Starbucks. But in a place like [city name], you have, you know, Magic Bean and Java Jive that I love. At times, Magic

19Bean’s coffee [her primary coffee shop], it’s so strong, it’s so intense that I need a little break and I’ll do like, Java Jive for a little bit of a pace changer.

I: How would you compare Magic Bean to Starbucks? Carie: Obviously, you don’t have the corporate world behind Magic Bean and how big they

[Starbucks] are. I mean, when you see a Starbucks like in Auckland, you’re going, Starbucks, what are they doing here? But it looks exactly the same. I mean, you might as well be in New York, you might as well be in Chicago, or wherever, you know, Rockford. I do think they do an amazing job of having great quality for as big as they are.

Negotiating Moral Ambivalence. Whereas oppositional localists express a strident

antipathy toward the idea of frequenting Starbucks, café flâneurs are less rigid in their patronage

decisions and periodically opt for Starbucks owing to convenience or social considerations (e.g.,

Starbucks is a good place to have a casual business meeting). For Brian, the movement between

Starbucks and a preferred local coffee shop symbolizes a shift between his normal work-a-day

life and a much less familiar bohemian world where he feels like a writer. This symbolic

meaning is evident in the following excerpt. Brian uses the artsy countercultural ambiance (and

strong coffee) of his favorite coffee shop as a creative impetus, but as an early riser, he also

frequents Starbucks as a prelude to his writing pursuits:

Brian: I’ve started this habit of kind of going there [Eureka Joe] just to write. I have a couple of journals I’m working on and a book on like the relationship between money and spirituality. So a lot of time this place is like a creative place for me to do some writing over a cup of coffee. The coffee I think kind of stimulates me to think, you know, it gives me the jitters too but it helps stimulates my creative processes. A lot of times I find myself at home saying “I can’t write” here. So a coffee shop kind of gives me that, kind of umm, place where I can kind of get away from it all. A funny situation is that Eureka Joe opens up at 7 o’clock in the morning. And I find myself up at 6:30 in the morning and Starbucks opens on the same street at 6:30 so I have my first cup at Starbucks waiting for Eureka Joe to open and then I’ll have my second cup at Eureka Joe.

I: Do you bring the Starbucks cup into Eureka Joe? Brian: No, I don’t think I am that bold. [laugh] I finish it off. So, yeah, Starbucks is nice, it’s

kind of cool but it doesn’t have the same feeling of being here in the mornings. It’s like the difference between going to McDonald’s or this place called George Webb’s that

20serves burgers and fries. George Webb is like, you’ll meet a real slice of society that way and McDonald’s will be very homogenized kind of feeling to it. George Webb, you can meet just about anybody there. A biker could come or, I don’t know, all sorts of different people I guess and that intrigues me. That’s why I don’t like going to Starbucks. It reminds me too much about how where I grew up, which is, you know, suburban and white. I guess it’s comfortable in a way because everyone is anonymous. So, I knew my dad came to visit he would be comfortable at Starbucks, so I took him in there.

All of our café flâneurs express some variation on the idea that Starbucks is a

comfortable place whose primary shortcomings are dullness and uniformity. They do not divide

the world into stark Manichean terms, where Starbucks represents a diabolical force and where

local coffee shops symbolize all that is noble and good. However, they do realize that Starbucks

is commonly vilified as the paragon of globalization’s worst excesses and that frequenting

Starbucks is a taboo practice within many quarters of the local coffee shop culture, as evinced by

Brian’s reservations about walking into Eureka Joe with a Starbucks’ cup. Café flâneurs also

have friends and acquaintances who do regard Starbucks as a global Goliath. In the case of

Sandra, her dispassionate comprehension of the anti-Starbucks discourse, coupled with social

pressure to boycott the chain, leads to a half-hearted renunciation of Starbucks even though she

surreptitiously frequents this chain:

Sandra: The shop I feel most connected to probably will be Java Jive and a lot of it has to do with just the fact that it is not a big chain like the Starbucks. For a long time I wouldn’t go to Starbucks because in my circle of friends it’s not socially acceptable to go to Starbucks because it is just a big corporate and that it destroys all the local coffee shops. It’s not necessary that I feel that strongly but it’s that my friends feel that strongly. It’s peer pressure for not going to Starbucks to the point that if I want to go to Starbucks and carry something out, I will bring my own cup so I can walk around without having a Starbucks cup in my hand in public. I know that’s ridiculous. I don’t personally feel that I can’t frequent Starbucks based not on my own beliefs. There’s a Starbucks that’s right by my house. For a long time, I didn’t go because my boyfriend is really opposed to Starbucks but it’s so convenient and so comfortable. So I go there anyway and hope that nobody sees me walking out of there who will think less of me for being there. So I guess I would never be attached to Starbucks because it is corporate. There is nothing that’s special or charming about it as far as I am concerned.

21 Strikingly, Sandra voices one of the most damning beliefs from the anti-Starbucks

discourse – it destroys all the local coffee shops – and then immediately notes that she does not

feel very strongly about it. Much like our other café flâneurs, Sandra has an intellectual

awareness of the anti-Starbucks discourse, but she has little emotional investment in these beliefs

and she does not imbue any overriding moral significance to her choice of coffee shops. Her

driving consideration is sensitivity about the perceptions of others who do make such moral

ascriptions. Attachment rather than patronage is where she draws the moral line; she may go to

Starbucks but it will never be a favorite establishment. Yet, this symbolic boundary is ultimately

justified on aesthetic rather than political economy grounds; the perceived lack of distinctive

charm once again emerges as Starbucks’ Achilles heel, rather than political economy concerns.

Much of the anti-Starbucks discourse concerns backstage activities related to competitive

practices, relationships to coffee growers, environmental effects, and a gamut of labor issues.

Café flâneurs pay little heed to these indictments because their personal politics are more

consistent with a neo-liberal model of market competition. Accordingly, they interpret

Starbucks’ marketplace dominance as a consequence of its customer service acumen,

comfortable atmosphere, and quality products rather than predatory practices. Moreover, they

tend to ascribe a caring capitalist good intent to Starbucks’ management; that is, they assume that

Starbucks’ profit goals are balanced by concerns for the environment and its workforce.

However, café flâneurs do not view local coffee shops and Starbucks as morally

equivalent alternatives. In their narratives, Starbucks is squarely situated in the realm of profit-

seeking economics and savvy marketing. In contrast, they place local coffee shops in the

sacralized realms of authentic artistic expression and the gift economy. The following reflection

from Patrick exemplifies this emphasis on authenticity. In diametric contrast to his idealized

22German cafe, which he sees as expressing tradition and the artistic whims of its owners,

Starbucks’ aesthetic is viewed as a highly calculated, corporate fabrication of an authentic coffee

shop devoid of artistic merit:

Patrick: Starbucks is almost so calculated as to be unappealing. I mean, it’s really calculated. Remember the movie Beetlejuice? Remember the sets of that, where like, the furniture all was kind of curvy and brightly colored? And there was like zig-zaggy polka-dots and things like that, you know. That’s what their [Starbucks] décor is. There’s a theory, decadence in art is when craftsmanship replaces creativity. That’s the difference between art and graphic design. And that’s exactly what’s happened at Starbucks. Like the ambiance there is GRAPHIC DESIGN! It’s like, punch in the numbers and get curvy furniture and a broad palette of pleasing pastels. You know that it’s one design team centered in San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles. Some major metropolitan area design team has come in and “okay, here’s how we’re going to design the café of the, then, ‘90s’,” right? I’m sorry, that just doesn’t work for me. I’d rather have tradition, you know.

Whereas oppositional localists vilify Starbucks as a corporate colossus seeking world

domination, café flâneurs, in a rather odd way, humanize Starbucks; they construct it in terms

akin to a geeky friend who is self-consciously trying to act sophisticated in hopes of garnering

social approval. This endearing anthropomorphism aside, café flâneurs also view Starbucks’

contrived identity and standardized layout as a traditionless, profit-driven marketing construction

that will change whenever customer preferences shift. In contrast, the authentic ambiances of

local coffee shops are deemed to express the aesthetic tastes of their owners and the distinctive

character of the neighborhood they serve.

Another way that café flâneurs privilege local coffee shops over Starbucks is a labor-of-

love attribution. Their narratives emphasize that the owners of their preferred coffee shop are

motivated by higher ideals and goals than profit considerations:

Carie: Here [Magic Bean] it’s comfortable, I don’t know if its, if it’s the flow of how you move from the coffee pot. I like this place because you can pour your own coffee. I think Tracy does an incredible thing, sort of an all-you-can-drink, bottomless cup, which I think is great. So many places you buy a cup of coffee, and I like really hot coffee, so I’ll

23typically start with a cup like this, I’ll fill it up halfway and do like a couple half cups, so it’s really hot. If you’re paying each time, that’s like, you know, an expensive endeavor, I’m not sure Tina (the owner) will get rich doing that, but I don’t think it’s about getting rich. I think it’s about serving a really—she really wants to serve a good cup of coffee—a really fresh, great cup of coffee. And teach people about good beans.

Historically, the bottomless cup of coffee has been a kind of gift that proprietors of third-

place establishments offer to their clientele (Oldenburg 1989; Sherry 1995). While Starbucks

could undertake this atavistic practice, its servicescape would still lack a necessary ingredient: a

visible proprietor who seems to be vesting him or herself in the shop and who leaves a personal

mark on its aesthetic and social ambiance. As illustrated by Carie’s passage, café flâneurs

interpret the most beloved aspects of their favorite local coffee shops as a gift from the owner(s).

Their feelings of customer loyalty are grounded in the reciprocal obligations of the gift economy.

Oppositional Localists/Communal Grounds Kate: I’m sure you’ve seen the bumpersticker, “friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.” I like

that because supporting businesses like this is essential, and it goes much larger than just Revolution House. Like now that the coffee culture took off like ten or fifteen years ago, you know, these big giants, like Starbucks, are coming in and positioning themselves in the market so that little people can’t get a foothold. That’s why I support places like this.

Muniz and O’Guinn (2002) discuss the role oppositional brand loyalty plays in cementing

feelings of similarity and solidarity (i.e., consciousness of kind) among members of a brand

community. The oppositional brand is perceived to be a threat to the community and an enemy to

be fought at every turn. Oppositional localists clearly construct Starbucks as threat and foe and

they are rhetorically armed by the anti-Starbucks discourse. However, oppositional localists

espouse a generalized support for local coffee shops rather than just a specific establishment (i.e.,

local brand). Although each of our oppositional localists has a favorite shop, they express a

social and political alliance with patrons of other local coffee shops.

24In keeping with the anti-Starbucks discourse, oppositional localists see Starbucks as a

grave threat to the very existence of a diverse local coffee shop culture:

Debbie: Like, I prefer coffee shops like this, I mean, like I feel, especially in Chicago, our theory was the reason we weren’t able to find a really good coffee shop there is because a Starbucks is on almost every corner.

I: Do you go to Starbucks? Debbie: Oh, no, no, no. Starbucks is awful. There’s Caribou, which is the same kind of thing. I

don’t like those chain coffee shops. I mean, Starbucks, there is practically one on every corner. There is even a Simpsons’ episode where Bart Simpson walks into the mall, and then you see a Starbucks and you see next door, coming soon Starbucks. Then he leaves and you see the whole mall from the inside, and it’s wall-to-wall Starbucks. It’s funny, but in a way it’s true.

The “wall-to-wall Starbucks” narrative is quite prevalent among oppositional localists, a

metaphor that is further elaborated through bleak images of plagues, cancers, or colonizing

forces. Whereas café flâneurs view Starbucks marketplace ubiquity as a testament to its well-

earned popularity, oppositional localists take it as a galling affirmation that local competitors

have been crowded out. Several of our oppositional localists (many of whom view coffee as a

life necessity) describe situations where they were traveling and had little practical choice but to

frequent a Starbucks. Rather than viewing Starbucks as a comfortable old standby, in the manner

of café flâneurs, they rail against the lack of convenient local choices (presumably due to

Starbucks’ rapacious market expansion) and express disdain toward Starbucks’ ambiance:

Laura: You’re going to run into definitely an element of individuals who are avoiding it [Starbucks] and they’re here because they like to support local businesses and I agree. I mean, it’s kind of hard, I try to do my part, supporting local businesses. But if I am in a different community, it’s hard to find local businesses sometimes, because Starbucks are pervasive and they’re everywhere, and they’re kind of like at all these convenient places that you find yourself. Like in the airports or if you get off a subway, they’re right there. It’s just that convenience. So, I think when I’m traveling, and I really need something right away, I’ll go, I won’t say, “no, I refuse.” But locally, here at home, I don’t go there.

I: So, how do you feel when you have to go there?

25 Laura: I feel like, “oh, man.” Like, “oh, well. I just need this.” And I think that’s why I

feel so upset because it’s just like my necessities are so basic. I just need a coffee. I just need some caffeine. I just need a place to rest and drink my coffee for an hour. I don’t like these ridiculous names of coffees. They’re just like these crazy made-up names, and they can be really long. My annoyance came to a head when I was in Boston, and it was just like a whole, an all-around bad experience. I went in, it was the closest thing. You know, I’m not from Boston. I didn’t really know where to go. I needed a place to go for two hours to sit and work before I had another meeting at this conference. There was a Starbucks close by, so I went in. Get a coffee. Fine. Sit down. The counter person just kept calling out an order, someone had an order up, and it was “double mocha caramel macchiato! double mocha caramel macchiato!” and she just kept saying it. I thought “double mocha caramel macchiato, like what is that?” Is it truly a name or just some thing that the branding guru made up because it sounds cool and Italian?

Not only do oppositional loyalists intellectually comprehend the anti-Starbucks discourse,

they also experience this global chain as a personal affront to their aesthetic, social, and political

values. When patronizing a Starbucks, they feel exploited by a Machiavellian marketing

machine. The following passage from Kate gives voice to this adversarial experience, and it also

illustrates a key social typology shared by oppositional loyalists. Their preferences for local

coffee shops are anchored by a steadfast conviction that they possess an understanding about the

dark side of transnational corporations that is lacking among the general population and most

particularly the typical Starbucks customer:

Kate: I mean, I’ve been there [Starbucks]. Like I did just go to Starbucks, actually, a week or so ago, because I was out in New York, I was looking for coffee because I had a ten-hour drive ahead of me and it was the only place I saw. You know I had no idea where there would be a coffee shop, but I saw Starbucks. I’m like, “okay, I got to go to Starbucks.”

I: How did you feel about going there? Kate: Well, it’s not like there are bad people who work there. I mean, the people who work

there are just like working everywhere else. They were very polite, and they gave me water, too. But, I feel like I’m in an experiment. I walk in and get this feeling that this is how they think people want a coffee shop to be, you know. They’re doing marketing research. They probably interviewed a thousand people. And one woman will say I like a couch, a good couch. And another person will say I’d like to see a little fireplace. So,

26they put together this idea of a universally accepted, but I have a feeling the average Starbucks customer is more like in their thirties, like they’re an older professional crowd. They’re not so concerned socially or politically, maybe. Like they’re not really concerned about supporting a big corporation. I don’t know if you saw the Austin Powers movie…I think Dr. Evil had his headquarters up in a Starbucks building in Seattle.

Communal Grounds. Whereas café flâneurs experience coffee shops in a highly

individuated manner, oppositional localists construct their preferred coffee shops as a locus of

communal relationships. Their communal experiences have two key social foundations. The first

is foreshadowed by Kate’s preceding comment. Oppositional localists are socially linked by their

sense of sharing common political cause and a collective vision of an enlightened or progressive

political economy. Through this radical political sensibility, oppositional localists imbue their

preferred local coffee shops with a nexus of social and political values they feel challenge

prevailing corporate power structures. Accordingly, they portray the support of local coffee

shops as an activist endeavor:

Bob: I think the main feature that appeals to me is that they [owners] are trying to build a sense of community here. Their goal isn’t necessarily financial. They want to be able to, you know, afford their house payments and to eat, but they pay their employees very well, much better than most jobs of this sort would pay. They’re very active about doing independent art shows and promoting independent artists. They’re both musicians and have a band… They do music shows on the weekends, every Friday and Saturday, and they promote the most independent artists you can imagine and folk singers. They’re very politically active. I think that’s the community they’re trying to build around, people who are politically active and committed to social change. I think that may be the number one appeal. They do good product. They do it very well. They make coffee very well. They have great food. All their food is vegan, including their bakery. But it’s that sense of social activism about these two people in particular that I love.

Like café flâneurs, oppositional localists celebrate the proprietors of local coffee shops

for pursuing higher ideals rather than profits. However, oppositional localists do not

symbolically place their preferred coffee shops in the gift economy. Rather, local coffee shops

are seen as fulfilling a realpolitik agenda by enacting ideals of living wages, small-is-beautiful

27anti-corporate activism, ecological sustainability, tolerance of lifestyle diversity, and by

supporting independent artists. In the case of Bob’s preferred coffee shop (Revolution House),

there is a definite political edge to the work of the artists and musicians who are featured.

Finally, Bob’s reference to vegan food also highlights that the owners of Revolution House are

quite involved in food politics and animal rights movements.

Among those in our sample who are familiar with Revolution House, there is a clear

consensus that this establishment is the paragon of local coffee shops. This ideal standing reflects

that, in almost every single aspect of its operation, Revolution House is perceived to be the

antithesis of Starbucks, embodying a social, political, and aesthetic ethos that is militantly anti-

corporate. From its second-hand décor to its leftist political posters to its Greenpeace fliers to its

steady stream of politically-oriented folk singers and poets, Revolution House provides a social

space that fully embodies the anti-Starbucks discourse. Other coffee shops with a strong

following among oppositional localists do not exude such an overtly political milieu. They do,

however, hit the right anti-Starbucks notes by offering fair trade coffees; providing a venue for

local artists; and supporting alternative local media and fundraising activities for activists groups,

such as the AIDS support network.

Whether manifested in a high profile or more subtle fashion, this left of the dial political

sensibility—which invokes the specter of 1960s radicalism—is closely aligned with the social

positioning of these local coffee shops as countercultural havens. A recurrent phrase among

oppositional localists is that their preferred coffee shops are open to diversity. However, this

sense of diversity is defined through a diametric contrast to middle-class lifestyle norms, fashion

mores, and standards of aesthetic taste. For individuals who often feel out-of-place in

mainstream social settings, the countercultural ambiance of bohemian coffee shops

28communicates an acceptance of alternative lifestyles. These experiences of being at home in

the company of kindred spirits can generate a powerful emotional resonance and sense of devout

loyalty to the shop, its owners, and customer community:

Rose: I love this place [Revolution House]. When I was sixteen, a friend brought me here. I was just like, “oh, yeah, this is a cool coffee shop.” So, I loved it. I really loved it here. I just felt so at home knowing that, well, first of all, I knew I was different. I’m gay. These people accept diversity, everything from the color of the wall and the paintings to all the murals by the [outside] door. It was so fascinating. And the people that worked here, the owners, Ken and Gina, are so cool. The people that they hire are so friendly overall. You can’t always go to a business establishment and have like a philosophical conversation with the person working there. But here it always seemed like that was possible. It’s just like I love it here. So, it’s the atmosphere. I mean, it really is a wonderful atmosphere. I like the art here. See these lamps? I love how they always are open to like weird new art. They play good music. I come to the music shows on Fridays and Saturdays. You don’t have to have a ton of money to go to see a good show. A lot of times, it’s local music. They’re so open to a diversity of music and experimentalism and originality, with pretty political leanings as well, and I like that, too. I think there are a lot of artists that come here that are really conscientious about their work. It’s a really nice place to come and just like meet your friends and meet people from right around here. It’s kind of nice. It’s just really comfortable. It feels like an extension of my living room.

A strong preference for unconventional décors, art, and diverse (e.g., countercultural)

clientele can be readily seen in the reflections of both café flâneurs and oppositional localists.

Whereas the former group read this countercultural milieu as a spectacle to be enjoyed,

oppositional localists see it as a setting that reflects the particular social views and political

persuasions that link together a diverse community of alternative minded individuals.

Oppositional localists are quite sensitive to and critical toward aesthetic changes in their favorite

coffee shops that seem to be moving in the direction of a Starbuckified ambiance:

Rebecca: I don’t like Java Jive after they rehabbed it. They fixed it up real fancy. It just seemed colder for some reason. I just think they tried to fix it up to compete with Starbucks, to make it look nicer inside. When they did that, it lost some of its charm. I don’t know. Maybe there were structural things and they figured they might as well try to clean it up while they were at it. This place [Revolution House] is actually pretty similar to Java Jive, the people that work behind the counter and the relation that they have with the customers. A lot of weird people go into Java Jive, too. Like the street musicians and people that are regulars. But Java Jive doesn’t have as

29

warm of an atmosphere, which is one reason why I don’t like it that much. It’s kind of sterile in there. All the chairs and tables are the same. Negotiating Moral Ambivalences. The preceding quotes lamenting Java Jive’s post-

renovation coldness and sterility speak to a moral hierarchy that exists among oppositional

loyalists.2 A kind of social and moral discounting ensues when local coffee shops take on the

aesthetic trappings of Starbucks.

While Java Jive may have sacrificed some of its bohemian appeal, oppositional localists

still regard it as a legitimate local coffee shop owing to its use of fair trade coffees; the funky,

countercultural style of its staff; its support of politically minded local artists; and sponsorship of

poetry slams and open-mike evenings. In contrast, another popular and quite successful local

coffee shop chain is a target of unqualified opprobrium because it is deemed to be a Starbucks

clone, oriented around similar corporate values:

Bob: Anchors Away has very rigid policies within regards to employees. They won’t hire anyone with visible tattoos or body piercings. The owners modeled their shop on Starbucks. That’s what makes it hard, too, because you do see some people that look like small independent locals but, anytime a business grows too much, well, I think that has been the problem there. They grew too much. They stopped focusing on the quality of their product, and they started focusing on how they did it. They were doing it in a very rigid manner. You must do it this way, and they started using a Starbucks-like jargon to call out drinks back and forth to people, using grande or whatever instead of small, medium, and large. It’s very silly to me. And to make your employees adhere to this rigid code of, you know, call the drink and repeat it back. That’s the kind of corporate culture that I think is dehumanizing the workers, which I definitely don’t see in the independent stores here.

Rebecca: I don’t go to Anchors Away. It’s more sterile. Everybody has to look a certain

way to work there, and it is always kept very clean and professional. It seems like it is

2 Java Jive undertook this remodeling in direct response to the opening of a nearby Starbucks and an ensuing loss of business. The owner sought to attract a broader swath of customers by upscaling his shop. A space that had been dimly lit, cluttered, and decorated with mix n’ match furnishings became bright, open, and tastefully furnished in a European style. Other policy changes also accompanied this new look. For example, the staff was directed to abandon a long tradition of giving free coffee to several neighborhood eccentrics, including one who liked to wander the store and strike up exceedingly elliptical conversations with customers.

30geared more toward the business-type people, which is just not a crowd that I really, you know, mesh with very well. Also, I was walking past there a week or two ago, and they had this sign outside their door that said USA Today, I don’t know, it was some compliment from USA Today, like it said a great place for friends, warmth, and coffee, something along those lines. But the thing is that all of the coffee shops that I want to patronize would never, ever make a sandwich board out of some review that USA Today gave them. USA Today is like this big corporate newspaper, and you just don’t go around running off your tongue that USA Today says you’re great. That doesn’t make it a good coffee shop to me.

For oppositional localists (particularly those supporting Revolution House), the moral

failing of Anchors Away is that it seems to endorse corporate values, from its employee policies

to its steady expansion in the local market to its public display of USA Today accolades. Their

critical perceptions are not without merit. This local chain does in fact cater to a professional

crowd, its employees do tend toward a clean-cut look with body piercings and tattoos seldom

seen, its décor does present a conservative ambiance, and it does place a much higher emphasis

on efficiency and standardization of service than the more bohemian coffee shops.

Yet, on the other hand, this same chain also offers a wide selection of organic and fair

trade coffees, supports a number of community events, and, perhaps even more than other

celebrated local coffee shops, funnels profits back into the community through its growth-

oriented business strategy. Its wage scale is very comparable to other local coffee shops and it

offers a better benefit package than other locals. Our observations and conversations with

Anchors Away’s employees suggest a congenial and fairly loose atmosphere, except for high

traffic periods where their attention becomes very focused on the job. The dehumanizing

standardization assailed by Bob can also be read as a means of quality control that benefits

customers and reduces workers’ stress during rush periods. Indeed, even the most ardent

supporters of Revolution House acknowledge that they can get better coffee at other places, such

as Anchors Away. Among those in our sample who are not fans of Revolution House, their

31standard complaints are inefficient service, occasionally rude or indifferent staff, and high

variation in food and coffee quality.

Though Revolution House’s customers are quite astute at deconstructing the artifice of

Starbucks’ design and critique other locals (be it Anchors Away or Java Jive) for emulating its

corporate look, none question the authenticity of Revolution House’s décor, seeing it as a

spontaneous, unplanned expression of the owners’ (and community’s) aesthetic tastes. Yet, one

could argue that its avowedly anti-corporate, bohemian ambiance is no less calculated than the

explicitly Starbuckified motif of Anchors Away and that Revolution House employees are also

screened by informal criteria necessitated by the shop’s countercultural posturing.

Our pro-Starbucks participants did comment on the intentionally second-hand look of

local coffee shops, an affectation they found completely unappealing. Patrick, a café flâneur,

offers a more pointed reading of Revolution House. We present his comment because it nicely

illustrates how the authenticity ideal used to venerate local coffee shops can be turned on its

head, placing these establishments on an equal moral/aesthetic plane with Starbucks: a rhetorical

move made possible by the fact that the local coffee shops and Starbucks inhabit a common

dialectical space organized along the same global structures of common difference:

Patrick: Revolution House smacks of a certain pretentiousness. It’s like, did you really not have enough money to buy a couple of matching chairs at IKEA or something like that? Or you know, did you really need to go to the junkyard and pull out the front seat of a ’57 Chevy to make that your bench? No, of course not. You’re making a certain statement here about what your café is. And that’s perfectly fine, right? The problem is the hypocrisy in their “we’re against statements mentality” It’s like, no, you’re not against statements, and you’re also not against dress codes. You just simply have your own.

As evinced by the disparagements of Anchors Away, the underlying structures of

common difference that dialectically position local coffee shops in the Starbucks’ brandscape

also give rise to moral ambiguities and uncertainties. The underlying dialectical tension is that

32emulating Starbucks’ ambiance does not necessarily indicate that a local coffee shop is

flouting the socially responsible values celebrated by oppositional localists. Acknowledging this

fact, however, also undercuts the sharp moral distinction that orders oppositional localists’

preferences and that anchors their oppositional brand communities.

In the following passage, David treads along this slippery slope, though he is discussing,

not a Starbucks wannabe, but the proverbial devil itself. His former view of Starbucks as global

pariah has been significantly moderated by a newly found awareness that this chain’s customer-

driven orientation, which can be lacking in owner-centric local coffee shops, can engender

socially beneficial outcomes:

David: There was something I wanted to tell you about chain coffee stores, Starbucks particularly. I recently had this conversation with a friend of mine who says that when she travels, she goes to Starbucks because they sell shade-grown fair trade coffee. She thinks the environmental impact is greater than the socioeconomic impact of going to a local store that doesn’t sell organic coffee. So, when she travels, it’s more important to her to know that there is a place where she can get environmental friendly coffee because she thinks that locally owned places may not care about that at all. She thinks having chain coffee shops are important because they are more inclined to be, oh, how did she put it, responsive to the consumers. Because Starbucks didn’t used to sell that, and because of demonstrations and constant requests and complaints, they started carrying it. So, anyway, I’m not sticking up for chains but they do have their place. Because of that, I don’t know that it is always better to go to the locally owned coffee shop than a chain coffee shop. I mean this is kind of a recent. We just had this conversation two weekends ago but it made me put things in a different perspective. So, anyway, I’m not sticking up for chains but they do have their place.

A Cup of Capital to Sit (Socially Bounded Preferences) Scott: I don’t like Starbucks because it seemed like every time I was there the people have their

laptop and then they have their New York Times or whatever, their espresso and it just seems sterile. There was nothing, like here it’s a little gothic and a little different. So, it seemed too sterile, it just felt uptight. It just seemed like I didn’t fit.

This interpretive theme addresses a family of issues related to the socially situated nature

of consumer preferences. In developing this theme, we will not present additional textual data

33because it has been a subtext of the preceding participant quotes. Café flâneurs and

oppositional localists share a common experiential goal: finding a coffee shop where one feels a

sense of belonging, homeyness, and comfort. Our position is that these preference-driving

experiences reflect the socio-cultural shaping of consumer choice.

Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Holt (1998) has argued for an embodied,

practice-oriented view of consumer preferences and tastes. From this standpoint, consumers’

family and social class backgrounds engender habituated and deeply felt predispositions that are

in turn manifested through their aesthetic tastes, styles of consuming, and preferences. Allen

(2002) further develops the implications of this sociological view in his “Fits Like A Glove”

(FLAG) framework. Our participants’ narratives exhibit many qualities that are quite consistent

with Allen’s FLAG model. Their reflections are replete with references to being at home in some

coffee shops and conversely feeling painfully out-of-place in others.

When our coffee shop consumers did seek to explain their experiences of belonging or

not belonging, their narratives suggest a post-hoc rationalization of affectively-driven

preferences (see Zajonc and Markus 1982). For example, several café flâneurs identify

Starbucks’ intimidating litany of drink options, ranging from basic espresso to the treacly but

trendy frappuccino to the culture-blending chai latte, as a key source of their discomfort.

However, a large selection of drink options, replete with Euro-lingo, is a standard feature of

coffee shop culture. The much satirized, complexity of java lingo (i.e., the skinny, half decaf,

half regular, double cappuccino) can be heard in local coffee shops and Starbucks alike.

Returning to Scott’s vignette, customers who use laptops and read the New York Times are

fixtures in even the most bohemian coffee shops. The differentiating factor, however, is whether

34or not these intricate drink menus and seemingly erudite clientele are embedded in an overall

ambiance where participants feel at home.

Holt (1998) and Allen (2002) both rely upon Bourdieu’s (1984) construct of cultural

capital to theorize consumers’ experiences of fitting or not fitting. As summarized by Holt (1998,

p. 3), cultural capital is commonly defined as “a set of socially rare, and distinctive tastes, skills,

and knowledge” that is “fostered in the social milieu of cultural elites.” For individuals who hail

from more affluent and intellectually oriented backgrounds, a high level of cultural capital

(HCC) is a naturalized aspect of their social world and life experiences. Conversely, individuals

tend to be low in naturalized forms of cultural capital (LCC) when their family backgrounds are

marked by conditions of socio-economic necessity and where educational emphasis is placed on

acquiring practical skills needed to attain working class jobs (Allen 2002).

A cultural capital view of consumer preferences works quite well in explaining the

feelings of discomfort that many of our participants expressed toward Starbucks. It also accounts

for the perceptions of other participants who profess more positive feelings toward this chain,

experiencing it as dull but comfortable third-place. However, Bourdieu’s (1984) cultural capital

model proves less adequate for explaining the preferences for local coffee shops among our

participants who have backgrounds that are working class or rural-agrarian.

Let us begin with the cases where the cultural capital/FLAG model seems to apply. Our

participants speak as one in their view that Starbucks’ décor and ambiance exude a corporate

feel. Their perception is an intuitive but quite apropos reading. As Schmitt and Simonson (1996,

p. 84-85) discuss, “the Starbucks’ style has been with us for many years—in fact, it has its roots

in the hallways of corporate America. Starbucks transformed the world of coffee house leisure

35by echoing the precision and artistic level of modern, well-designed office spaces, law firms,

corporate boardrooms, and libraries.”

One can walk straight from the corporate corridors of power into a Starbucks with very

little socio-cultural and aesthetic disturbance. Middle-class families, with their emphasis on

educational credentials, careerism, economic status, and material success (Holt 1998), are de

facto social training grounds for the corporate world. Our participants who have middle class and

upper middle class backgrounds find Starbucks’ upscale corporate ambiance to be a comfortable

setting because they are fundamentally at home in this socio-cultural milieu. Their preferences

for more aesthetically distinctive, bohemian coffee shops can likewise be explained through

HCC consumers’ predilections toward “cosmopolitanism, self-actualizing leisure, exoticism,

decommodification, and connoisseurship” (Holt 1998, p. 19).

On the other hand, consumers who profess strong feelings of discomfort in Starbucks can

also be explained through a cultural capital reading, even when their social backgrounds do not

map onto the extreme polarities suggested by Holt’s (1998) HCC versus LCC acronymic claim-

to-fame. In the case of Scott, for example, his family background is rural-agrarian. However, his

family valued educational achievement, and Scott is the beneficiary of living in a state with a

very strong public education system. He works as a business analyst in a financial services firm

and is pursuing an MBA, a key credential for entry into the managerial echelons of the corporate

world. At face value, one would expect Scott to experience Starbucks as a fairly hospitable

environment or at least as one that resonates with his ideal self-image (Keller 1998), as a

successful corporate professional. By considering the enduring aspects of his class background,

however, we can rectify this apparent disparity.

36None of Scott’s degrees are from elite institutions. He funded his undergraduate

college degree by working construction jobs. He describes his tastes as being “very blue collar.”

For example, he is a self-proclaimed sports nut and country and western fan. In his interview,

Scott expresses doubt about how far he can go in the corporate world and whether he has chosen

the right career path. He further notes that interacting with other MBA students has made him

more self-conscious about his working class background and has further exacerbated his sense of

not fitting into the corporate world:

Scott: They just don’t understand that somebody is not stupid because they don’t have a degree. In fact, they’re probably smarter because they can do math and fractions in their head and get it right first time and build this huge house you’re living in that won’t fall down on your head.

From a cultural capital standpoint, Scott’s discomfort with Starbucks can be traced to the

embodied predispositions that emanate from his class background. Starbucks’ corporate

ambiance, coupled with the preponderance of seemingly upscale customers, triggers Scott’s

anxieties about his aptitudes and qualifications for corporate success along with his defensive

posture toward the upper classes, whom he believes look down upon the working class.

On the other hand, the HCC versus LCC distinction offers a less adequate explanation of

the preferences for local coffee shops among our participants who, like Scott, have working class

and rural-agrarian backgrounds. Cultural capital theory predicts that such consumers will have

consumption tastes characterized by preferences for the manual over the intellectual, the

informal over the formal, and the material and hedonic over abstract ideals of formalist

aesthetics, and that they will exhibit a referential consumption style (i.e., preferring cultural

experiences that are realistic and immediately relevant to their life circumstances) rather than the

cosmopolitan, edifying orientation characteristic of HCC consumers (Allen 2002; Halle 1992;

37Holt 1998). For example, whereas HCC consumers tend to have an aesthetic taste for abstract

art, LCC consumers have little appreciation for this genre, instead viewing realism and accuracy

of depiction as the definitive signs of artistic merit (see Bourdieu 1984; Holt 1998).

The reflections of our participants with working class backgrounds are strikingly at odds

with these LCC typifications. For example, all express an appreciation for the aesthetic diversity

of their preferred local coffee shops and proclaim their pleasure at being exposed to unusual and

different art forms. All praise the authenticity and cosmopolitan flair of their preferred coffee

shops. In this sense, the coffee shop preferences of our participants with LCC backgrounds have

more than a passing resemblance to those normally associated with HCC consumption styles.

Bourdieu’s analytic framework most directly addresses the social conditions that lead to

the reproduction of class distinctions across different contexts and generations (Hall 1992).

Accordingly, Holt (1998) and Allen (2002) focus on the reproduction of class distinctions

through consumption practices and choices. Both assume that individuals will retain their

habituated HCC or LCC predilections, even in statistically uncommon cases of significant

upward or downward economic mobility.

As defined by Holt (1998, p. 19), HCC consumers possess cultural capital that provides

access to “desirable education, occupations, social networks, and spouses.” This

conceptualization of the “desirable” is anchored in Bourdieu’s (1984) pivotal theoretical

argument that economic resources, economic opportunities, and socio-political power are

socially distributed within an objective field of distinction. From this viewpoint, all social actors

are positioned within an overarching socio-economic hierarchy that is symbolically represented

and internalized via the social conditioning of tastes (i.e., the habitus) that distinguishes HCC

from LCC consumers (see Hall 1992). In this way, established socio-economic hierarchies can

38be rationalized as a natural consequence of the dominant classes’ refined tastes, social

sophistication, and intellectual acuity (Bourdieu 1990).

Bourdieu (2000) does discuss a transformative dialectic that can arise between social

actors’ embodied predispositions and the demands of social situations. When individuals find

themselves thrust into situations where their habituated practices do not mesh with social

structures (Bourdieu’s prime example being the responses of Algerian peasants to the new

economic and cultural order imposed by French colonizers), these socio-cultural shocks

necessitate that embodied predispositions be adapted. Bourdieu (2000) also posits (somewhat at

odds with his overall theoretical position) that the extent of these adaptations will be marked by

considerable individual variance.

Our study suggest that these adaptations can occur with much less severe shocks and can

be volitionally pursued rather than being imposed by external historical forces or massive

structural changes in the economic order. These transformative effects can mitigate expected

LCC-HCC differences in consumption styles. However, explaining this more subtle dialectic of

transformation requires a contextualized view of cultural capital, similar in spirit to Sarah

Thorton’s (1996) analysis of subcultural capital.

Coffee Shop Knowledge & Practices as Contextualized Capital. Thorton (1996) argues

that Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory must be modified to adequately explain the status

hierarchies at work in Britain’s youth-oriented club cultures. These hierarchies are contingent

upon knowledge of breaking musical genres, skill in performing the newest dances, a cutting-

edge fashion sensibility, and very nuanced displays of coolness that deftly avoid exaggerated or

self-conscious posturing. Importantly, status distinctions in the club/rave culture scene cut across

class lines. For the most part, high status in club culture does not directly transfer to other sectors

39of the formal economy and society. As Thorton (1996) notes, clubbers are often stigmatized

when seeking employment owing to their association with illicit drugs and perceived antagonism

toward mainstream moral values. The more status one has in club culture—which means it

becomes a way-of-life rather that a weekend pursuit—are also more likely to face greater social

stigma.

To address these complexities, Thorton developed the construct of subcultural capital,

which refers to cultural capital that operates and confers status within a particular social domain.

Like generalized cultural capital, however, subcultural capital can be converted into economic

capital (such as when in-the-know clubbers leverage their musical knowledge to organize rave

events or to become DJs) and social capital via the myriad social networks that operate within

the club culture. Conversely, clubbers readily spend economic capital on record collections,

updating wardrobes, and the costs of going to the hot clubs, all of which contribute to the

accumulation of subcultural capital.

From our standpoint, the concept of subcultural capital highlights that there is no

objective, structurally autonomous field of distinction. Rather, forms of cultural capital and the

statues they convey are, in fact, always contextualized. The coffee shop milieu presents an

interesting interplay between more elite forms of cultural capital and a form of subcultural

capital. To participate in local coffee shop culture is to become immersed in a set of discourses

and aesthetic practices that have considerable overlap with the affinities of HCC consumers. In

some sense, local coffee shops can be inviting and accessible cultural training ground for

individuals lacking in cultural capital resources, particularly for those who have designs on

upward mobility.

40For example, connoisseurship is heralded as a defining trait among HCC consumers

(Halle 1992; Holt 1998). Several of our participants, again with working class backgrounds,

discuss in detail how they became coffee connoisseurs through their experiences in local coffee

shops. This form of training is most prevalent among patrons of Magic Bean, whose owner takes

it as a personal mission to educate customers about coffee. She has created an informal but

didactic third-space. For example, she holds regular coffee-tasting events, modeled after wine-

tasting protocols, and the purchase of a pound of coffee often comes with a recitation about the

sensory properties of the beans, the details of the particular roast used, and recommendations for

the grind most appropriate for a given brewing technique.

None of our Magic Bean regulars had been coffee connoisseurs prior to discovering this

shop. Rather, they had a general preference for coffee and began frequenting Magic Bean owing

to its location and comfortable feel. Over time, they became educated into the nuances of coffee

connoisseurship and the differences between coffee varieties, such as those that are bright and

wine-like versus full-bodied ones with earthy undertones. Several also reported, against cultural

capital typing, that their newfound appreciation for fine coffee and proper techniques of

preparation had gradually led to a more discriminating stance toward food and restaurants.

To clarify, the theoretical issue in question is not the shared preferences for local coffee

shops among consumers having greater or lesser degrees of cultural capital (as defined by family

background, education, and occupational culture). As Holt (1998) notes, it is quite common for

LCC and HCC consumers to consume the many of the same objects (or social spaces) but they

should do so in dramatically different ways, with LCCs presumably being quite content in the

world of mass consumer culture and its homogenizing tendencies:

41The pursuit of individual style in the face of pervasive homogenizing forces is problematic only for HCCs for whom originality and authenticity is a highly valued mark of distinction in their social milieu. The LCCs do not encounter this problem, since they pursue lifestyles in a less individuated manner that neither precludes commodification nor demands unique identities (Holt 1998, p. 21).

In sharp contrast, our LCC consumers are highly critical of mainstream consumer culture

and the homogenizing forces of globalization; they use coffee shops as a means to construct

identities that differ from the mainstream status quo; they embrace aesthetic diversity removed

from their actual life experiences; they tend toward connoisseurship; they express strong desires

for creative self-expression and personal enrichment; and they are vitally concerned with the

question of authenticity, all traits imputed to an HCC orientation.

What socio-cultural factors can be used to explain this convergence between LCC and

HCC styles? The Starbucks revolution popularized coffee shops as a form of third-place; they

became a fashionable place to be seen rather than just being a meeting ground for intellectuals,

bohemians, and disaffected artists (though that historical legacy contributed to the coffee shop

cachet). The proliferation of local coffee shops that followed in this wake led to a number of

niches catering to different kinds of consumers, often reflecting neighborhood demographics. As

such, individuals readily could find an accessible coffee shop to use as a third-place hangout but,

owing to the underlying structures of common, they nonetheless are exposed to an aesthetically

diverse, cosmopolitan, connoisseur-oriented social milieu.

Most importantly, local coffee shop culture gradually immerses individuals in the anti-

Starbucks discourse. We argue that the anti-Starbucks discourse operates as a form of cultural

capital within the context of local coffee shop cultures and that this contextualized form of

cultural capital (which implies a particular intellectual and aesthetic stance) overlaps with

42consumption practices typically associated with HCCs. Echoing the key terms of the anti-

Starbucks discourse, both our working class informants and bourgeois informants agree that this

global brand is a grave threat to cultural diversity. The anti-Starbucks discourse also constructs

local coffee shops as bastions of cultural difference, authenticity, and tradition that can be used

to resist the forces of cultural homogenization. This critical view inculcates a kind of aesthetic

appreciation that extends beyond hedonic pleasures or a referential identification.

In sum, the overlap between the coffee shop preferences and consumption styles of HCC

and LCC consumers emerges from the confluence of several factors: 1) a cultural desire for

comfortable third-places that seem to transcend class-differences; 2) the popularization of coffee

shops as third-places; 3) the diversification of local coffee shops along a set of structures of

common difference; and 4) the transformative interaction between individuals’ social

backgrounds and the localized forms of cultural capital that exist within coffee shop culture.

Participation in local coffee shop culture provides access to localized cultural capital that

engenders a style of consumption more commonly associated with HCC consumers.

DISCUSSION

Our analysis of the Starbucks brandscape offers four major contributions. First, it

suggests that brand image is better conceptualized as a narrative system rather than as an

associative network. For example, the stories consumers construct about Starbucks determine

whether its ambiance is interpreted as simply dull or a diabolical threat to cultural diversity,

comfortable/homey or intimidating/totalitarian, and many other morally charged distinctions.

Second, it further develops a dialectical view of brand meaning (e.g., Holt 2002). The Starbucks

brandscape maps local coffee shops and their regular patrons within a network of discourses and

43Starbuckified aesthetic dimensions. Reciprocally, the meanings of the Starbucks’ brand are

also constructed in relation to the micro-market positioning and customer communities of local

coffee shops. Third, it extends prior research on oppositional brand loyalty (Muniz and O’Guinn

2001) by exploring the underlying narrative and experiential foundations of this opposition and

by revealing that different forms of oppositional brand loyalty can be engendered by a common

critical construction of an enemy brand. Fourth, it extends research on the socially shaped nature

of consumer preferences (Allen 2002; Holt 1998) by developing a contextualized view of

cultural capital that is grounded in marketplace discourses and consumption practices and that

can efface the predicted class-based differences in consumption tastes.

Our analysis also suggests an alternative means of mapping out consumer-brand

relationships. Fournier (1998) discusses three kinds of brand relationships: 1) a traditional one in

which commitments to trusted brands serve to anchor consumers’ self-concept; 2) a postmodern

one where consumers enact multiple selves through a diversity of brand meanings; and 3) a

transitional relationship that is organized by superficial self-brand connections and that relies

upon disliked brands to define who the consumer is not. Her list of brand relationships is by no

means exhaustive. Fournier’s (1998) generalizable move is to develop a typology of brand

relationship trajectories and a theoretically related model of brand relationship quality based on

analogy to interpersonal relationships.

While this approach has considerable theoretical merit, it abstracts consumer-brand

relationships away from the marketplace contexts (and marketplace discourses) in which they are

embedded. In contrast, our café flâneur and oppositional localist classifications highlight

relationship orientations that are embedded and conventionalized in the Starbucks brandscape.

Another interpretive tack would be to further explicate the different kinds of brand-consumer

44relationships that exist within these collectively shared styles of consuming local coffee shops.

This approach is foreshadowed by our discussion of Patrick’s college experiences of German

cafés and their biographical connection to his ardent patronage of local coffee shops. His

personal form of café flâneurship bears a similarity to Fournier’s (1998) brand traditionalists.

Patrick’s favorite local coffee shops invoke memories of a very significant (and transformative)

period of his life and thereby help to sustain, in his current life ordered by the demands of work

and parenthood, a sense of continuity to a former lifestyle of less encumbered cosmopolitanism.

Pushing this line of analysis further would provide theoretical insights into how consumers’

brand relationships are shaped by specific marketplace contexts and, in a more managerial vein,

the underlying structural commonalities that exist across a multiplicity of consumer-brand

relationships. In this way, key structural commonalities can be discerned among the variety of

idiosyncratic relationships that individual consumers may form with a given brand.

This cultural mode of analysis can provide situation-appropriate ideas for enhancing key

attributes of brand quality relationship (Fournier 1998). For example, a generic recommendation

to increase consumers’ love and passion toward the brand might well leave an owner of a local

coffee shop more flabbergasted than enlightened. However, understanding the respective

motivations and preferences of café flâneurs and oppositional localists can provide actionable

insights for enhancing customers’ feelings of passion and commitment toward an establishment,

such as offering little perks that can be interpreted as a gift or becoming the artistic hub of a local

neighborhood or taking up a radically politicized anti-Starbucks position.

Beyond Brand Image

The vast majority of research undertaken on branding ensues from psychological

orientation, often having a strong normative bent (Keller 2002). In this psychological/managerial

45oriented research stream, a brand is a central node of an associative network that consumers

form over time as they learn connections between the brand and variety of cues, benefits,

symbolic meanings, and other intangibles (see Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000; Keller 2002; van

Osselaer and Alba 2000). Consumers’ brand image associations then influence their future

information acquisition and choice strategies (van Osselaer and Janiszewski 2001).

The psychological-normative brand management literature expresses unbridled hosannas

toward brands, like Nike or Starbucks, which enjoy dominant market positions. Seldom do their

assessments of the brand address the underlying cultural complexities which often contain the

seeds for cultural and marketplace backlashes, at least before the latent problems come to

fruition:

Consider Starbucks. It's not just a cup of coffee. In 1983, Starbucks was a small Seattle-area coffee retailer. Then while on vacation in Italy, Howard Schultz, now Starbucks’ chairman, was inspired by the romance and the sense of community he felt in Italian coffee bars and coffee houses. The culture grabbed him, and he saw an opportunity…. And so Starbucks began to focus its efforts on building a coffee bar culture, opening coffee houses like those in Italy. Just as important, the company maintained control over the coffee from start to finish—from the selection and procurement of the beans to their roasting and blending to their ultimate consumption. The extreme vertical integration has paid off. Starbucks locations thus far have successfully delivered superior benefits to customers by appealing to all five senses- through the enticing aroma of the beans, the rich taste of the coffee, the product displays and attractive artwork adorning the walls, the contemporary music playing in the background, and even the cozy, clean feel of the tables and chairs (Kevin Lane Keller, 2000, p. 148).

From this normative standpoint, the primary threat to Starbucks’ stellar brand image

would be management confusing consumers by muddying up what the brand stands for or by

losing focus on their distinctive competencies in service and product quality. However,

Starbucks’ positive associations and the various aspects of the servicescape that appeal to “all

five senses” are contingent upon consumers’ narrative frame-of-reference. For café flâneurs,

Starbucks’ ambiance is less cozy than boringly bourgeois, whereas for oppositional localists, it

46symbolizes an alienating, colonizing, and homogenizing corporate intrusion upon a vibrant

local coffee shop scene. An associative network theorization of brand image also has difficulty

addressing the cultural construction of a brand that occurs through complex social and cultural

interlinkages, such as the transferal and adaptation of the McDonaldization thesis (Ritzer 1998)

to Starbucks or the cultural jamming appropriations of the Starbucks logo by consumer and anti-

globalization activists. The anti-Starbucks discourse even derides the quality of Starbucks’ coffee

and its patented roast (Charbucks).

While associative network models do not formally theorize the notion of culture, their

default assumption is that culture is a complex array of information that individuals more or less

incorporate into their cognitive schemata. In these models, culture functions as an exogenous

variable that influences consumers’ cognitive processes and structures. The anthropological view

of culture as something intrinsic to the ways in which individuals think, feel, and act and as

being the very fabric of social identifications and collective actions is largely irrelevant to this

theoretical construction of the brand-culture relationship.

In contrast, our analysis of the Starbucks brandscape aligns with an emerging stream of

research that is advancing a cultural conceptualization of the relationships among brands,

popular culture, and consumer experiences (Fournier 1998; Holt 2002; McAlexander, Schouten,

and Koenig 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). Nonetheless, the analytic goals of these studies

remain subtly directed by the historical dominance of managerial/psychological interests in

brand research. Accordingly, the primary thrust of their research implications details how their

empirical findings and theoretical insights can enhance the management of brand image and

brand equity. None of these studies has pursued the broader implication that under certain socio-

cultural/marketplace conditions, brands can function as a cultural category or model.

47 Roy D’Andrade (1990, p. 45) defines a cultural model as a “cognitive schema that is

intersubjectively shared by a cultural group.” Bradd Shore (1996) elaborates upon this basic

definition by proposing that cultural models are institutionalized through socially shared and

publicly available discourses and representations via ritual practices and embodiment in the

design of the physical environment. Thus, a cultural model shapes individual action and thought

both through institutionalized social practices and interactions with the material world and

through internalization via cognitive and embodied structures. Once individuals have

internalized a cultural model, they can then generate personalized mental models (which is

equivalent to the cognitive psychological construct of a cognitive schema) which blend

intersubjectively shared meanings with mental images, reference points, and idiosyncratic

memories that emanate from their biographical circumstances and specific contextual demands

and cues. The underlying cultural model nonetheless engenders a family resemblance among the

diversity of mental models that different individuals (and circumstances) can call forth.

The brand-as-cultural-model is a constellation of discourses, social practices, and

material forms (such as the layout of a coffee shop) that influences the thoughts and actions of

consumers. Through the use of corporate icons (ranging from Betty Crocker to the Nike-Michael

Jordan basketball industrial complex), mythic appeals (such as Harley-Davidson and the outlaw

biker mystique) to intricate lifestyle narratives, ideals, and guidelines (Martha Stewart Living,

REI, Ralph Lauren) brands can become conduits of corporate-inspired discourses that aim to

shape consumers’ lifestyles and identity goals in a fairly profound way. As more and more

corporations stake out competitive positions in the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore 1999;

Schmitt 1999), their brand discourses are translated into multifaceted servicescapes which

encode brand meanings in spatial layout, atmospherics, the experiences being delivered, and the

48appearance and demeanor of employees (see Sherry et al. 2001).

The Starbucks brand manifests many aspects of a cultural model but on an even broader

scale. In terms of Starbucks, its coffees, products, and services are embedded in a rhetorical

system that conveys cosmopolitan sophistication, worldliness, Euro-chic, and professional

success (see Elliott 2001); ideals that are consistently reinforced in the very design of Starbucks’

third-place stagings (see Schmitt and Simonson 1996). Starbucks’ cultural influence extends well

beyond the confines of its corporate website, catalogues, and 6000-plus retail outlets. The

Starbucks revolution has thoroughly shaped consumers’ expectations and ideals about what a

coffee shop should look like and the kinds of experiences it should afford. These Starbuckified

structures of common difference have given rise to myriad Starbucks clones and countercultural

bohemian coffee shops that are defined by their antithetical positioning to Starbucks’ corporate

ambiance.

Starbucks’ management does not intentionally propagate the anti-Starbucks discourse but

it is a pervasive aspect of its brandscape because the micro-market dynamics of local coffee

shops and the myriad social networks that link anti-global activism with local coffee shop

patronage. When a customer walks into a Starbucks and sees a display of free-trade coffee or that

organic milk is now available on request, there is a good chance that these product offerings will

be interpreted in relation to the public critiques of its corporate modus operandi. As we have

shown, the anti-Starbucks’ discourse also exerts a significant influence upon the perceptions of

local coffee shop patrons.

These conditions lead to a fair degree of inertia that limits the extent to which managers

can change the brands’ dominant meanings because they are manifested across a wide range of

marketplace stakeholders and different social spaces. To return to Starbucks’ decision to sell fair

49trade coffees, this strategic shift has had little effect on the general terms of the anti-Starbucks

discourse. Activists decry this move as a cynical marketing ploy, countering that free trade

coffees comprise less than one percent of Starbucks’ wholesale purchases

(www.organicconsumers.org). The institutionalized and socially diffuse nature of brand

discourses is elided by the conventional idea that brands are something that corporations own

(Aaker and Joachimsthaler 2000; Keller 1998, 2000) and it is only partially broached by the

more democratic view of the brand as a set of meanings co-constructed between a corporation

and its consumers (McAlexander, Schouten, and Koenig 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001).

The brand community literature most directly engages the multiplicity of socio-cultural

relationships and intersecting discourses that contextualize brand meanings when discussing the

phenomenon of oppositional brand loyalty (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). As exemplified by the

rivalries between Apple users and IBM users and later Windows users, oppositional brand

loyalty strengthens the brand community’s feelings of social solidarity by constructing a

competitive brand as a threat to the survival of the brand community and the integrity of its

shared values. Unquestionably, Starbucks motivates oppositional brand loyalty among local

coffee shop enthusiasts. However, their opposition hails from not only a sense of direct threat to

their preferred local coffee shops but also the iconic status of Starbucks in broader cultural

criticism of global capitalism. The anti-Starbucks discourse is a multi-faceted one that generates

different kinds and degrees of opposition toward the brand. For example, café flâneurs and

oppositional localists demonstrate qualitatively different forms of oppositional brand loyalty and

experience distinctive forms of moral conflict with respect to their coffee shop patronage.

50CONCLUSION

Rather than treating the brand as a management tool or an object of consumer

perceptions, we have used it as an analytic device to illuminate consumers’ socially shared

marketplace knowledge and more broadly marketplace meanings, including those embodied in

consumption servicescapes. We have argued that hegemonic brands can exert a structuring

influence upon consumers’ thoughts, feelings, and actions through their complex of discourses

and material forms, thereby functioning as a metacognitive and ideological system. Seen in this

light, the much-discussed corporate strategy of integrating brands into consumer lifestyles (Holt

2002; Klein 1999) can be an impetus toward a broader social dialogue whereby the brand is

constructed, contested, appropriated, reconstructed, and otherwise infused by myriad cultural

discourses. Under such conditions, a brand acquires a socio-cultural significance that extends

well beyond its origins as a strategic tool of marketing management. The brand becomes a

cultural model that consumers incorporate into their personal outlooks, embodied practices, and

communal identities. Rather than thinking about brands or experiencing emotions toward a

brand, consumers may come to think and feel through the discourses and material forms that

constitute the brand’s cultural form.

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56TABLE 1

PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS

Pseudonym Age Occupation Education Family Status

Alan 70 Writer-publisher BS Married, empty nester Anne 42 College professor PhD Divorced with kids Beth 21 Student BS (in progress) Single Bob 40 Massage therapist BS Single Brian 39 Mental health nurse MS Single Carie 43 Teacher/Track coach MS Single Cooper 33 Private investigator BS Single David 37 Librarian BS Married Debbie 26 Marketing researcher BA Married Dennis Early

70’s Retired police officer BS Married , empty nester

Ella 28 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Single Fatima 22 Student BS (in progress) Single Frank 34 Production manager BS Single George 31 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Single Greg 36 Sales consultant MBA Divorced with kids Janet 21 Student BS (in progress) Single John 34 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Single Joy 34 Social worker BS Married Kate 35 Freelance writer/ yoga

instructor High school Single

Kevin mid 30s

Teacher MS Single

Kumar 30 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Single Laura 27 Social worker BS Married Martha 60 Retired social worker/ student BS (in progress) Single with kids Mary Mid

20s Student BS (in progress) Single

Matthew 32 Engineer/consultant PhD Single Molly 30 Student MS (in progress) Single Patricia 52 Small business owner Some college Married with kids Patrick 31 Small business owner MS Married Paul 30 Unemployed BS Single Rebecca 21 Student BS (in progress) Single Rose 26 Teacher BS Single Sandra 33 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Single Scott 26 Graduate student/ business

Analyst MBA (in progress) Married

Stephen 40 Taxi driver/ union organizer BS Single Tori 32 Graduate student PhD (in progress) Married

57

FIGURE 1

Culture Jamming Versions of the Starbucks’ Logo

58

FIGURE 2

Meanings of the Local in the Starbucks’ Brandscape

Local Coffee Local Coffee Shop MilieuShop Milieu

Global Structures of Common Difference/Anti-Starbucks Discourse

Café flâneurs Oppositional Localists

The BuzzThe Buzz

•Social

•Creative

•Negotiating Moral Ambivalence

Communal GroundsCommunal Grounds

•Radical Political Sensibility

•Countercultural Haven

•Negotiating Moral Ambivalence

A Cup of Capital to SitA Cup of Capital to Sit

•Socially Bound Preferences

Interplay of contextualized social & cultural capital

Interplay of contextualized social & cultural capital