The Starbucks Brandscape and Consumers’ (Anticorporate) Experiences of Glocalization

Abstract

Prior studies strongly suggest that the intersection of global brands and local cultures produces cultural heterogeneity. Little research has investigated the ways in which global brands structure these expressions of cultural heterogeneity and consumers' corresponding experiences of glocalization. To redress this gap, we develop the construct of the hegemonic brandscape. We use this theoretical lens to explicate the hegemonic influence that Starbucks exerts upon the sociocultural milieus of local coffee shops via its market-driving servicescape and a nexus of oppositional meanings (i.e., the anti-Starbucks discourse) that circulate in popular culture. This hegemonic brandscape supports two distinctive forms of local coffee shop experience through which consumers, respectively, forge aestheticized and politicized anticorporate identifications. We changed the way people live their lives, what they do when they get up in the morning, how they reward themselves, and where they meet. (Orin Smith, Starbucks CEO) T he marketing success of Starbucks is legion. The Starbucks revolution transformed gourmet coffee from a yuppie status symbol into a mainstream consumer good, and it essentially created the American coffee shop market. In 1990, there were approximately 200 freestanding coffee houses in the United States; today there are over 14,000, with Starbucks owning about 30% of the total (Daniels 2003). Starbucks's model of café cool has proven readily exportable on a global scale, sweeping through Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan, Britain, and much of continental Europe, with bold plans to enter coffee mecca (Holmes 2002). Starbucks conquers Rome; grande or venti, Brute? Starbucks's market dominance coupled with its hyperaggressive expansion strategy-which leads to a significant rate of cannibalization among its own stores (Daniels 2003; Holmes 2002)-also make this brand a lightening rod for protest and criticism. Starbucks has become a cultural icon for all the rapacious excesses, predatory intentions, and cultural homogenization that social critics attribute to global

Asian Brands and the Shaping of a Transnational Imagined Community

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The comparative analysis of organizational forms: Considering field and ecological approaches

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