

Those "stupid ideas" may not be so stupid - eykanal
http://shadyacres.tumblr.com/post/37841861568/on-the-breadth-of-the-human-psyche

======
casca
It's very easy for us to look at others and identify their behaviour as
stupid. I've always tried to assess it as all people are domain stupid, just
like all people are domain smart. By this I mean that everyone has their area
(or domain) of expertise and of ignorance.

For example, I'd suspect that the majority reading this cannot change the
brakes on their car? Perhaps a similar proportion of mechanics can code C++.

Looking at the example in the post - people buying a limited edition $400
Starbucks card for $450: Starbucks is far more than a coffee vendor to those
who shop there regularly. When you spend money on things, you become overly
attached to those things. As Starbucks overtly sells consumables, there is
some dissonance to attachment without a physical manifestation. So with the
limited edition gift card, I am able to focus my attachment on a physical
object.

The additional genius of this move was to make the card $450. They could have
also made a $25 card with $20 credit but the high price of both the card and
the premium meant that people felt that it was a better representation of
their attachment to Starbucks.

~~~
rdtsc
> Starbucks is far more than a coffee vendor

You hit the nail on the head. They describe themselves as a 'third place'. The
first two are work and home. Starbucks is a third place right after that where
people meet, work, relax, spent time. It is not a simple coffee shop. For
every person who ridicules it for all the stores being the same and selling
the same burnt coffee there are 100s who love going to Starbucks and enjoying
a more or less of a consistent experience.

After a while it is also a place where memories are made for those people.
Like people attached to the homes they live in and they remember "ah here I
burnt my first steak after we were married" a lot of people will probably have
similar memories of Starbucks "here we came on our first date", "here I met my
biggest client for coffee and it turned my business around".

It was interesting that even in the economic downturn their stock didn't
suffer too much. People still want to get out and go to this "third place"
even in bad times (I am saying this because I sure thought they would lose
quite a bit of business, as what kind of people would keep paying $4 for
coffee when jobless rate is at 15% for example, I was wrong).

~~~
lostlogin
I was and still am mystified at the Starbucks business here in New Zealand.
The chain doesn't seem to be doing great (link below). However whenever I go
past their store in K-road it looks very busy. Yet it is near some great
independent coffee stores. I'd argue that some of the competition nearby is
world leading. Theatre cafe for example. It is within a stones throw and its
owner, Chris Priestly, is the former owner of Atomic coffee - a New Zealand
coffee institution. The independent cafes and very small chains here are
amazing, yet people still go to Starbucks. I know I'm missing something,
because those people who go there see something I don't.

[http://nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...](http://nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10836272)

~~~
dagw
For many people the quality of the coffee is the least important aspect for
choosing a coffee shop. Are the chairs comfy, is the atmosphere fun and
friendly, are the muffins and sandwiches good, is the music (or lack of) to
your taste, is the wifi fast and reliable, is the staff cool with you and your
friends sitting there for 3 hours and only ordering two drinks between you.
All of those things and more are often much bigger factors than simply the
quality of the coffee.

------
zdw
Buying a new car and losing 10-30% of the value by driving it off the lot is
lunacy to some people.

Buying a used car with no warranty is lunacy to others.

Stupid is relative.

~~~
rimantas
I never quite understood the first group. I buy a car to drive it not to sell
at the moment I am out of the gates. And where would the get cars if no one
bought brand new ones?

~~~
Nursie
I don't know where we'd be but my thinking on the matter is that if I can get
twice the car for my cash because someone else drove it for a few months, then
why wouldn't I?

------
petercooper
Amy Hoy's talk at Webstock was along similar lines:
<http://vimeo.com/39750688> .. inspirational and worth watching (if only
because I'm a very minor example in it ;-)).

A lot of people find many things stupid until they're exposed to it enough.
"Wii" was a stupid name. Microsoft releasing a console was stupid. The iPod
was stupid. The idea of powered flight was crazy. Life, industry, and
entrepreneurship feeds on stupid and makes it smart.

------
spc476
"No one in this world, so far as I know-and I have searched the record for
years, and employed agents to help me-has ever lost money by underestimating
the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." ---H. L. Mencken

------
ky3
Ogilvy's Confessions has a fine line about this, which roughly paraphrased,
goes:

Those who are most successful in new business are those who show the most
sensitive insight into the _psychological make-up_ of the prospective client.

(Emphasis mine.)

------
smsm42
That's the beauty of the system - if you think somebody has more money than
sense, you don't have to resort to violence or coercion. You only have to sell
him a card that is worth $400 for $1000 (or some other shiny gadget, like an
app saying "I am rich" or just making farting sounds for those who aren't that
rich yet), and you both are happy, and both perceive you have more than they
came with (even though you both secretly think the other guy was stupid, but
who cares?). And you don't even have to do all the work yourself - there's a
whole corporation that does all the work for you for mere $50 (less than 10%,
how cheap is that?).

------
shanellem
"Don’t laugh at anything, there are business opportunities in places you’ve
never even knew existed."

Absolutely. The best entrepreneurs are the ones who can find opportunity in
the most unexpected places.

------
scottmagdalein
Guys, this is simple. For people who can afford it, it makes a great Christmas
gift if they love someone that loves Starbucks.

------
kamakazizuru
ironically - this seems to work perfectly well for startups and companies on a
less obvious level. Anyone remember the Gmail invites? They were offering
email - a service that existed for a decade already (free) at this point - yet
people were ready to kill for an invite! I remember a site that opened up
around it called GmailSwap - where people were often offering up cold hard
cash, in exchange for a Gmail invite. Today's launchrock pages are essentially
a gentler version of the same thing "sign up to get exclusive first access to
our beta" => "Give us your email so you can be the first to test buggy beta
software and tell us how to make it better" You can extend this to a lot of
different areas - schemes like Amway or Tupperware - and if I allow myself
some leeway - I'd say even some religions.

~~~
martinced
But people knew it was going to be (and still is) one of the best (if not the
best) webmail ever.

I couldn't wait to switch to GMail because I knew I'd still be using it today.
As an example, I forgot what email spam was and everytime I hear about email
spam I kept wondering: "People are still using mail clients connected to mail
servers that do forward spam en masse?".

And, surely enough, I'm here still using my GMail.

Asked a buddy at Google to send me an invite.

I don't remember that it was particularly buggy although I was one of the
early adopter.

I do remember it totally rocked compared to Yahoo! that said.

Why so much Google hate? ("Give us your email so you be the first to test
buggy beta software")

That's honestly not the GMail I remember: I remember it totally rocked since
the beginning.

------
nmcfarl
Article about the card, and EBay sales on Forbes:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/12/13/starbuck...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/12/13/starbucks-450-gift-
cards-sell-out-in-minutes/)

~~~
mynameishere
_The card can be reloaded with money. The card gives the recipient gold level
membership in the Starbucks rewards program. This includes a free birthday
drink, and a free drink or food item after the purchase of 12 drinks. Paying
with your registered Starbucks Card gets the cardholder brewed and iced coffee
and tea refills at no charge during your visit at a participating store._

It's not a bad deal for someone who goes there every day.

~~~
mv
All the benefits you listed are available with the gold card which you receive
after purchasing (25?) drinks with a normal registered card.

~~~
robryan
Which would cost more than the $50 being charged extra for this card.

~~~
cncool
Which is irrelevant

------
dgant
If you're reading this article on Hacker News, you are a very unusual person.
In fact, everyone's very different and very strange, but you in particular are
very strange.

If you extrapolate your beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes and expect them to
apply to the rest of the population, you are making a mistake, and missing
opportunities.

------
andrewflnr

      I’ve been thinking about entrepreneurship a lot lately,
      and this really drove home the point that I have no clue
      what people want.
    

I think this is the most important/practical point from the article. It
certainly is for me.

------
cyrusradfar
I think this is a case of you're not who they're marketing to. Nice post.

~~~
teeja
I think this is a case of not understanding operators who're fishing for
suckers. If you're not that kind of predator, you might not see it.

~~~
tinco
Why do you think the limited edition gift card owners/buyers are suckers?

~~~
ErikAugust
My guess is because these people are trading in $450 in cash for $400 of non-
redeemable Starbucks credit.

~~~
sopooneo
I would not get much pleasure from the possession of the metal card. Will
others? I think many will, even in excess of the $50 mark-up.

