The Coffee Shop and Customer Experience

Abstract

This chapter has the aim to improve understanding of the in-store customer experience in the retail environment by analyzing the business of coffee shops in the United States market with a specific focus on American and Italian chains. After a brief overview of the managerial literature on coffee shops, the main findings of the qualitative research is presented. In particular, this chapter outlines the features of the U.S. coffee shop landscape and explores American consumers' perception of the coffee shop experience using nethnography. The results show a complex framework from the offer and the demand perspective that could also contribute to supporting coffee companies in managing customer experience strategy in the American market.

The coffee drinking experience: Product extrinsic (atmospheric) influences on taste and choice

“…Although the results are a little complicated to summarize, broadly-speaking the participants' liking and consumption ratings were both found to be dependent on the testing situation. Meanwhile, in order to try and get a handle on the tactile factors influencing consumer perceptions of the coffee shop experience in the U.S., de Luca and Pegan (2014) analysed posts of relevant online communities created by American consumers . Interestingly, together wth background music, two tactile aspects of the environment were strong determinants of ambience preference, namely, comfortable chairs and couches (instead of innovative design pieces) as well as ceramic (instead of paper) cups.…”

Customer Work Practices and the Productive Third Place

“…Third places are social spaces that provide users with social experiences and relationships outside of their homes (first places) and workspaces (second places; Oldenburg and Brissett 1982). The bar or coffee shop is the prototype of the third place, a place buoyant with life (Lin 2012; Luca and Pegan 2014; C. J. Thompson and Arsel 2004).…”

Sonic Seasoning and Other Multisensory Influences on the Coffee Drinking Experience

“…A growing body of empirical research now shows that many aspects of the environment influence the coffee-drinking experience in a more-or-less subtle manner (see Spence, 2015b;Samoggia and Riedel, 2018): Everything from the cup to the background music (e.g., North and Croeser, 2006;Gater, 2010) to the softness of the chair that you happen to be sitting on (de Luca and Pegan, 2014; see also Pramudya et al, 2020), and from the brightness of the ambient lighting (e.g., Gal et al, 2007) through to the sound of coffee preparation (see Knöferle, 2012)-not to mention the background smell of the toasted cheese sandwiches as Starbucks found to their cost a few years ago (see Nassauer, 2014). The majority of the research on product-extrinsic influences on the perception of coffee has been conducted amongst those who like coffee.…”