As someone who has used this argument a lot, both here on HN as well as on websites to sell stuff, I feel the need to defend it now. When someone downloads a show or a movie from Netflix or elsewhere, $2 is not a huge investment. You'll be spending upwards of 40 minutes of your life watching this thing and being entertained by it. If a show is worth that kind of time, it's certainly worth $2 (or more) to support the people who made it.
In fact, as a European who regularly gets prevented from doing so, you should count yourself lucky that they allow you to pay for it in the first place. Also, I don't know a lot of places where you can even get a decent latte for $2 anymore.
People seem to sweat investing $2 per download for anything, even if they thoroughly enjoy the product, but they don't even think about spending $10 at the coffee shop. It's that kind of disconnect people are trying to address by invoking the latte thing.
In my head this marketing argument always boils down to "What, you waste money on overpriced coffee, why not waste your money here too?!" I think telling the consumer "hey, this is an impulse purchase" is going to trigger their "oh shit, I need to stop making stupid impulse buys" response.
Also, I envision the marketer thinking of me as part of a herd of cud-chewing cattle, or worse, like one of the people on the conveyer belt in Relead's god-awful landing page [1]. It's angering in some low-level way. Is this really how marketers think of consumers?
> People seem to sweat investing $2 per download for anything, even if they thoroughly enjoy the product, but they don't even think about spending $10 at the coffee shop.
Maybe you'll see less of this if you drop the "less than your stupid latte, dumbass" sales tactic.
Edit 2:
Sorry, that was a really jerk way to make my point, and I apologize below. Leaving it here however to preserve the thread.
> You'll be spending upwards of 40 minutes of your life watching this thing
I view it as investing 40 minutes of my life on top of the $2. There's so much of the free "hilarious, must watch" links to click that I won't even spend 1 cent unless I'm damn sure it's worth it. Not that I'm defending $10 lattes anyway but they are at least 99% predictable.
One big difference is, nobody selling coffee is competing against a vast, easily accessible sea of competitors handing out coffee for free.
The transaction cost is also much lower - you don't have to fill out a form, you dig into your pocket and fish out some change. Your pocket carries change without any need for a confirmation email. And you can easily pick between the $5 coffee, the $2 coffee or the $0.50 caffeinated can of sugar water. But however small, these still involve the exchange of money.
The analogy would work if at every door in your city, there was someone handing out possibly mediocre coffee to every morning commuter. Along with a flyer containing some offers that you don't have to take but maybe would consider reading while on the train. You can imagine what this is going to do to the business of the really nice couple who hand-select their beans from fair-trade producers in Brazil and just invested in a $15,000 espresso machine.
I think his point and yours are both fair enough. At the end of the day though, whether it's $2, £2, or £2k, it's really just a matter of ROI. The latte comparison is somewhat easy: most people like it, and it's (relatively) cheap. The argument at a more fundamental level doesn't extrapolate very well, though - I think it only survives on latte for the aforementioned reasons.
I don't pay $2 an episode on DVD - and then it's mine for years. Six disc boxsets of 18-20 episodes are going for 12-15 quid. The download should not be more expensive than the physical item - it shouldn't even be in the same ballpark.
It's very difficult to believe that, when you average it out, the fair market price for a movie download is $2. It's, to all intents and purposes free once you've paid for the cost of production.
Now coffee, by comparison, is relatively expensive to make and transport than then pay those little coffee house people to turn the machine on for you. There are a lot more palms to grease in the coffee business. It's not even close to comparable.
And it's not as if coffee sets the price at $2/40 minutes pleasure anyway. You only need a few cups of coffee for the entire day, and then you've got the rest of the experience - at least if you're in a decent coffee shop.
It just doesn't make any sense - the things shouldn't, on what it costs to make, be that expensive. And in terms of pleasure the equation's massively inaccurate.
This has bothered me too. The other day, I was talking about email (fastmail, rackspace etc) with a couple of colleagues - both of them scoffed at the idea of paying for email. The very same people who go to starbucks every single day, dropping 5$ for a cup of latte. Why wouldn't they pay for something as fundamental, and as important for email? I truly couldn't understand. Everything from banking to dating, lives in our email and yet they wouldn't pay. If this is the case with people who work in the tech world, and understand privacy etc very well, what about a "normal" person?
Perhaps the answer is that people have gotten used to everything being "free" on the internet. May be they think that the cable (or internet) bill is more than enough, and they are entitled to get everything for free online, including movies etc?
I think that how much exactly 2 pounds are worth is something so subjective that I agree that the original rant feels childish.
From an advertising standpoint, the latte example makes sense, because it's something a large chunk of people (in the US/UK) can make a quick mental comparison. In Italy I have seen many similar examples comparing goods and services to an espresso, or the price of going out for a pizza.
It's a given that for many people the 2 bucks spent on a Latte are completely worth it: I don't see why anyone should find the comparison offensive.
It's not like someone is criticising how you spend your 2 pounds. It's advertising. If you don't find the argument valid, just keep enjoying your Latte, and life goes on as usual.
> but they don't even think about spending $10 at the coffee shop
Sure those people exist, but don't forget that not all are like that. I wouldn't even consider spending that much at a coffee shop, especially not regularly.
People sweat giving their credit card information to every random site they have at least $2 of interest in. Sites get hacked, reducing the odds that you're one of the random victims is probably the best you can do to reduce your risk.
Meanwhile, that local coffee shop will probably still be standing there in a week, doesn't hold your card info (just swipes it temporarily), and you can go back and pound them in person if they do something wrong.
Most of the time when I hesitate over something like that it's because of the DRM. As Randall Munroe put it, "In the end, you'll be a criminal anyway."
This almost seems like just someone being contrarian for the sake of it. I've never used the "Costs less than your latte." spiel, but this is just a childish thing to write.
Yes, your coffee is great and wonderful, it's what you look forward to, etc etc. I'll first say that the majority of people don't have such an intimate connection to coffee, so congratulations for being a special little snowflake. I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there.
I don't even drink coffee and I get this analogy they're making. Most of us on this site are making more than enough money to sign up for dozens of these services per year and literally not give a shit. That doesn't mean we should, but the fact that they are that cheap DOES imply that there is little risk other than to your time(and if you don't have time, why are you on that site? Or here, for that matter.).
And before anyone says, "Well if that's the only argument they have for trying their product, it's justified.", I'd first say that I've never seen someone stupid enough to do that before, and I'd second say that's still bullshit, because your problem isn't with the coffee line, it's that they gave you no information as to what the product is. Come on.
This isn't to say you should try every product there is out there, but this is such a throwaway, worthless, immature argument to make that honestly I have to wonder how you didn't think to yourself beforehand, "Didn't the time it take to write this cost me more than my fucking morning latte?"
Woah... what's with the venom? The original article made a fair point: a coffee is more than the sum of its beans. Maybe it seems foreign to you because you don't drink coffee, but it's certainly true for me - buying a coffee is something I look forward to. Much more than I look forward to trying dozens of online services that provide some minor convenience to my life.
I bet the author enjoys writing too: so creating that blog post might cost more than a latte - but the experience of thinking, writing, editing and posting something online provides value to the author. Seems like a reasonable thing to do then!
>"This almost seems like just someone being contrarian for the sake of it."
Retorted a very angry person, disagreeing sharply with a short, lighthearted post written about how enjoyable latte is.
From the sounds of it, you're a bit out of touch with the common man these marketing lines are trying to reach. If they were trying to appeal to you, they would say, "hey you, come be super negative about other people's ideas! There's an endless selection of directors and producers to call stupid and childish!"
A few bucks a day still matters quite a bit to me. And I love latte. And I really liked the post.
I actually thought this was a rather profound way of thinking about that line "costs less than a cup of coffee" I used to work in public radio and this was a line that people threw in all the time and I always resisted using it. He hit the nail on the head when he said that this was a high bar to get over because I love my coffee so much that if I lay down to sleep at night and realize that I have not pre-loaded my coffee to be brewed in the morning, I will get out of bed and go through the long and loud process of grinding beans, cleaning out the pot etc. That is in part because I am a caffeine junkie but the other part is because I love the routine. I love the smell, I love the rush- I took it to mean that he is saying the 2 dollars you spend is only part of the equation and isn't a fair comparison to make to an equal expenditure-- he was just throwing out an idea... nothing to mock him over.
This comment is more than 100 words longer than the actual piece itself and seems particularly vitriolic in nature for a personal blog post about an observation he had.
It's a valid argument to make that, to him, comparing product cost to an experience he truly enjoys isn't the most effective way to convert him into a customer. At the very least it's something to consider for anyone who works with marketing.
I didn't read it that way at all. I read it as another slant on the pricing-on-value-not-cost debate.
The point of the article as I read it is not that £2 is cheap - hell I come from a generation where the idea of charging £2 for a cup of bloody coffee seems insanely expensive - but that you're not spending the £2 because it's cheap. You're spending it because it brings you significant value.
Selling yourself on cost, especially comparative cost to a different product/service, is not - in my experience anyway - a terribly effective technique outside of commodities. For just the reason outlined in this article. Sell on value instead.
I'm fairly certain this is why you're having trouble relating to the enthusiasm of the author. I'm not even joking - the reward response to coffee is huge.
Coffee gives a guaranteed positive experience - you know what you're getting - and the latte is not the only reason for that.
People are happy to pay for coffee even if there's a fair chance the coffee will be bad. If the service is good, and you get a relaxing place to sit and work, and you get a caffeine hit, that's usually more important than the product. Money spent on coffee is never wasted - you always get more value than the amount spent on the whole experience.
If you buy an app and it's bad - that's the end of your experience.
Even if your coffee is bad, you will likely get a refund or replacement, if you care to spend a second to ask.
If your app is bad - the money's gone and you have no recourse. You might be able to fight your way to a refund (but you probably will view it as sunk cost) and there's no way you'll get a better app as a replacement.
App developers who use the throw-away line "less than you spent on your morning coffee" need to be more aware of what they're comparing their experience to. Apps really don't compare well.
"I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there."
Then it is very stupid to buy it, so the "less than your latte" argument becomes "make a small stupid decision because you made a large one". Not very appealing.
>Yes, your coffee is great and wonderful, it's what you look forward to, etc etc. I'll first say that the majority of people don't have such an intimate connection to coffee
...
>I don't even drink coffee and I get this analogy they're making.
I think those two quotes are related. You don't understand.
...
>I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there.
caffeine is by far my favorite addictive drug. It's special in that most other drugs that are even close to as pleasurable carry with them significant dangers, or, at the very least, interfere with my ability to work effectively. Caffeine is the opposite; not only does it feel good, it makes me far more effective.
Like most addictive drugs, though, the delivery mechanism? it tastes really good to the regular users. And much like old scotch, fans can get something out of relatively small differences in process. I mean, I am okay being actively dependent on caffeine in ways that I'm not okay being actively dependent on alcohol, so price does matter more... I've got a moderately high threshold for "expensive" when it comes to whiskey, for instance, 'cause I'll go through a few bottles a year. If I needed a double to get up every morning, I'd pay more attention to how much the stuff costs.
But yeah, uh, middle-class people regularly paying extra for "special preparation" of their drug of choice is a luxury, to be certain, but it is a very traditional luxury.
> I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there.
I honestly can't think of anything. I shop for food once a month, (mostly online) pay my water bill, buy myself new clothes from time to time, car repairs and fuel, pay my martial arts teacher, obviously I've got to buy hair-care products and stuff like that so I don't look atrocious, I spend a reasonable amount on books. But I can't think of anything I just impulse buy and get nothing out of. I don't tend to impulse buy at all - I'm not the sort of person who walks into a shop unless I know there's something I want to buy in there. I find my money goes much further if I make a few high-value purchases that are really nice.
Heck, truth be told I rarely buy coffee. When I used to work in an office I bought an atomic coffee maker and a hot-plate - which I still have - and we made coffee in the office which was vastly nicer than the stuff at the coffee shop.
I suppose from time to time I go out to eat or drink, but there you're buying a social experience as well as the food and it's not clear to me that your $ to pleasure ratio isn't going to be vastly superior to coffee there.
Some people do waste a large amount of money, but I find it hard to believe it's a universal. What is it you think I'm likely to be wasting a lot of money on?
I don't know, I feel the same about my morning coffee. If Starbucks started offering coffee services online, people's perception of the product will change dramatically. Suddenly the 2 pounds will look like a massive amount to pay for a 'cup of coffee'.
I always think of the total yearly cost of these little recurring payments that are advertised and think whether that's really the best use of the money. It's hard to reason about £2/$2 but it's easier to think about what you can get or do with £100+ $100+.
I see a lot of friends struggle to get the money together for a summer holiday, yet every month they're spending £9.99 on Spotify, £5.99 on Netflix, £20 on Sky, etc. Gym memberships in London can easily run to £50 a month but you can haggle them down, same goes for phones - friends of mine are spending like £45 a month on their latest iPhone contracts.
Not sure what I'm getting at. Just that it's easy to make living a modern life very expensive if you're not careful.
Recurring costs are indeed problematic. I tend to think of everything as costs per month, including food and drinks. That's why I very rarely buy lunch, and even more rarely buy drinks, it feels like a significant cost.
Yeah $2 can add up. I like to read the early retirement blogs and would like to somehow someday be financially independent.
The way I like to think about it is to figure out how big of a nest egg do I need to earn enough of a return to cover that expense in retirement. For example, I would need an investment of $18,000 which earns 4% avg annual interest to cover my $2 daily coffee expense forever.
Its fun to think of all your expenses this way and as you build your investments you can see how much of your lifestyle is paid off forever!
The monthly costs on personal 'tools' are a material issue.
There are a tools like CodeClimate or Creative Cloud that I think people are not using personally because the costs are too high.
I believe, with tools like that, that if you make the 'personal use' fee trivial you get a wider base that will go on to introduce it commercially at work - so you net more over time.
20 years ago, as a student, I made this case to IBM on OS/2, I won 'letter of the month' in the internal magazine - they didn't change the pricing for personal use.
One thing I wanted to point out: There is a difference between food and a service. People are willing to spend more on food than on any service or product if you think about it long term.
When looking at my finances, food is always #2 every month right after housing.
I bought Burn Notice on iTunes. Every day, I looked forward to watching the next episode. Each episode was less than a cup of coffee.
I love my coffee, and I love Burn Notice. Possibly in equal measures. Sometimes I watch Burn Notice while drinking a coffee. Sometimes my children and wife join me. Life is often good.
Awesome. But I think that reinforces my point - Burn Notice was worth a lot to you right? A random $2 thing is unlikely to give you that much joy. So "this is cheaper than burn notice" would be a poor way to sell to you, because the other half that's needed to complete that argument - "this is more valuable than burn notice" - would be hard to establish.
You don't have to get all romantic in your notions of intangible value from lattes (or the rituals therearound, etc) to justify the idea that you're happy to pay for something with a known reward (even if it is honestly only marginally rewarding), but hesitant to pay for something with an unproven (and possibly negative) reward.
Secondarily, I'd argue that when you fall back to intangibles to justify your actions and expenditures, you should consider (just for the value of the experiment in doing so) skipping them for a while. A month or two or three. Sample new habits and rituals. You might prefer them.
This didn't render in chrome, I had to look at the source of the page to read it.
""It's only £2 - less than your morning latte."
I see this a lot, Netflix being the famous recent example. On the surface it seems reasonable; if you would spend this much on a small cup of coffee, why not spend it on our product instead?
But comparing to my morning latte is actually an incredibly high bar to set. What's valuable to me, as a human, is not the coffee itself but the experience. I spend half the morning looking forward to it, and half the afternoon in the afterglow. There's not just a drink, there's a place to sit and relax, free-flowing internet, pictures on the wall, and a waitress who fakes enough interest in my day that I actually believe it. Heck, at the café I'm writing from now the coffee itself is downright awful. But the moment I sat down I felt an eagerness to write. I've got more done in ten minutes here than in the four hours at home preceding it.
A cup of coffee might not be worth £2. But happiness is, and that's what I'm buying. If you want me to buy your thing for £2, it had better bring this much joy into my life. Otherwise, I'd rather have another cup.
Well said, I think this is a good rebuttal to setting low bar for downloading seemingly small things simply because people buy "real world" trivialities.
I think everything you said is true, and in addition, I believe we've been conditioned to be more welcoming to physical purchases. A physical purchase of $10 is a concrete, observable deficit that we can touch and hold. A $0.99 purchase online is virtual...it's an unbounded abstraction with no immediate anchor for our enjoyment to dismiss as a "good buy."
> This didn't render in chrome, I had to look at the source of the page to read it.
This is a classical example of doing css+js wrong.
Loading the page with js disabled, shows a blank page.
Disabling css, shows the content in a nearly non readable way, with extremely long lines.
Looking at the source tells me, that its not even HTML.
There is a more rational argument against "less than your latte". I cannot drink much more than a few lattes a day. So a $10 latte might be overpriced but at least this position in my budget is safely capped.
Not so with the $2 downloads. There's a bajillion of them not capped in any way, so the only way to cap this part of the budget is to be aggressively selective about what you pay for.
I purchased a car once, because someone told me that I'd spend 15k on coffee in my lifetime. As I drove away I realized I had been had. I don't drink coffee. (This was all a lie, I don't have a car and I drink too much coffee).
I think the whole argument is a bit silly (and in my opinion it's no one's business but my own what I spent money on or why, so I don't care one way or the other about this particular point), but let's be realistic.
Assuming you want to simplify spending choices to this degree, be realistic:
If it's Netflix, it's closer to $10 a month for unlimited usage. If it's a latte, it's more like $4 per day.
If you only buy one latte, and only on weekdays, that's in the neighborhood of $86 per month.
So if you accept the idea that you should select the thing that brings you the most "joy" for the lowest expenditure, then unless you plan to get Netflix and then just not use it at all (or if there's nothing on it you want to watch), it's clearly providing more value for a lower investment.
As I said... the whole thing strikes me as a bit silly and seriously presumptuous, but it's also pretty unambiguous which option "wins" if you consider it past "x and y cost the same" without bothering with the frequency of payment for both of them.
Having someone make you a latte is definitely worth the two pounds, and a tip, as well. People might think coffee is cheap? Sure, what is not cheap is the person who has to make you a bespoke beverage every morning. Plus milk. Plus it's not coffee, it's a shot of espresso. Plus, you probably put some sort of flavor in it, and it comes in a cup.
You could save money by making it yourself! And then you'd have to:
* Steam milk, and clean the pitcher out after.
* Grind coffee
* Make espresso, then clean the espresso machine. If you have a home machine, that means you had to fill it with water at some point, too.
This is a favourite refrain of cheggars to guilt you into signing up. 'It's only the price of a pint a month. Won't you give that up to save starving children?' Well no, that's a false equivalence. Like the article says, this argument doesn't take into account hidden value. For instance, I know I pay over the odds for my gym membership every month and if I payed only when I used it I would save money. But I also know if I didn't have the membership I would spend exactly £0 a month on the gym because I just wouldn't go.
When I buy apps, games, movies, etc. I always have a simple rule to follow: 1$ per hour of entertainment. Short games that cost a lot aren't worth it, but short games that barely cost anything are totally worth it. I never go to the movie theater because it's way too pricey for the amount of enjoyment I get from it. But that's just me.
The only thing on which I almost never count my money is food and drinks. I agree that it doesn't make sense to not have problems throwing money for a coffee that lasts a few minutes while not wanting to spend money on a movie or an app. I get what the author says there, but the experience he describes is only a once in a while deal for me. For instance, I buy Earl Grey tea because it tastes good for the amount of money I put in it. It's less than $0.10 per tea cup, which seems more than fine considering the amount of time I spend drinking it. However, most of the time, the less pricey food/drinks I can find often turn out to be the worst in terms of healthiness. We shouldn't count bucks when it comes to that.
This argument originated in the charity space, where it still works quite well. Yeah your $2 morning coffee makes you happy...imagine how happy $2 worth of food or clean water or medicine will make a little kid in Rwanda.
I agree that it's kind of a silly argument to use for Netflix. High-tech services need to market themselves by their inherent value, not by comparison to a commodity.
I can tell you this much ... I didn't sign up for cable TV or any "scheduled" programming because the value to me of wasting a lot of my time watching "entertaining" content is very small, and probably negative. On the contrary, the value of a latte in the morning -- if I drank coffee regularly -- would be much greater.
Since we're on the topic, I would like to point out that drinking coffee in the morning -- while by itself not harmful -- may be a symptom of a harmful roller-coaster schedule where you have to rely on substances to wake yourself up throughout the day. With a healthy schedule, you may as well try apples and an extra 10 minutes of morning exercise.
You know what would really be of a lot of value to me? Agreements between distribution networks to get each other's content when one doesn't have it, kind of like "roaming" for cellphones. If they had such a service, I'd pay the premium every time I want to watch a movie one of them doesn't have the rights for.
There's another argument in favor of the author's point. It's true that online purchases on Netflix or the app store are abstract and not immediately verifiable as "good" buys, there's also the danger of overspending. The former might actually be an intrinsic reaction to curb the latter.
I've personally seen many people buy things just because they're shiny and they could. On the app store, this translated them to buying hundreds of dollars of apps just because they were 1. "cool" (i.e. never open them again), 2. well marketed, and 3. trendy. Because they couldn't feel their wallet emptying, they just kept buying and were surprised at the iTunes receipt they later received, shocked really.
That's an extreme example, but it illustrates my point well.
One big difference is caffeine is a drug and having a chemical dependence is different than impulse. I have nothing to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a cognitive dissonance between reasoning about a coffee purchase and reasoning about some other product. Much of the OP's happiness, I'd submit, comes from that caffeine rush. Caffeine (and every other stimulant) makes you feel good and reminds you of feeling good other times you've consumed it. I have fantastic, and specific, memories of having espresso in Paris, Rome, and in my neighborhood. It's just not the same with paying for, and watching, a Netflix video.
[+] [-] Udo|13 years ago|reply
In fact, as a European who regularly gets prevented from doing so, you should count yourself lucky that they allow you to pay for it in the first place. Also, I don't know a lot of places where you can even get a decent latte for $2 anymore.
People seem to sweat investing $2 per download for anything, even if they thoroughly enjoy the product, but they don't even think about spending $10 at the coffee shop. It's that kind of disconnect people are trying to address by invoking the latte thing.
[+] [-] benjamincburns|13 years ago|reply
Also, I envision the marketer thinking of me as part of a herd of cud-chewing cattle, or worse, like one of the people on the conveyer belt in Relead's god-awful landing page [1]. It's angering in some low-level way. Is this really how marketers think of consumers?
1: http://www.relead.com
Edit:
> People seem to sweat investing $2 per download for anything, even if they thoroughly enjoy the product, but they don't even think about spending $10 at the coffee shop.
Maybe you'll see less of this if you drop the "less than your stupid latte, dumbass" sales tactic.
Edit 2:
Sorry, that was a really jerk way to make my point, and I apologize below. Leaving it here however to preserve the thread.
[+] [-] praptak|13 years ago|reply
I view it as investing 40 minutes of my life on top of the $2. There's so much of the free "hilarious, must watch" links to click that I won't even spend 1 cent unless I'm damn sure it's worth it. Not that I'm defending $10 lattes anyway but they are at least 99% predictable.
[+] [-] glurgh|13 years ago|reply
The transaction cost is also much lower - you don't have to fill out a form, you dig into your pocket and fish out some change. Your pocket carries change without any need for a confirmation email. And you can easily pick between the $5 coffee, the $2 coffee or the $0.50 caffeinated can of sugar water. But however small, these still involve the exchange of money.
The analogy would work if at every door in your city, there was someone handing out possibly mediocre coffee to every morning commuter. Along with a flyer containing some offers that you don't have to take but maybe would consider reading while on the train. You can imagine what this is going to do to the business of the really nice couple who hand-select their beans from fair-trade producers in Brazil and just invested in a $15,000 espresso machine.
[+] [-] _jmar777|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|13 years ago|reply
It's very difficult to believe that, when you average it out, the fair market price for a movie download is $2. It's, to all intents and purposes free once you've paid for the cost of production.
Now coffee, by comparison, is relatively expensive to make and transport than then pay those little coffee house people to turn the machine on for you. There are a lot more palms to grease in the coffee business. It's not even close to comparable.
And it's not as if coffee sets the price at $2/40 minutes pleasure anyway. You only need a few cups of coffee for the entire day, and then you've got the rest of the experience - at least if you're in a decent coffee shop.
It just doesn't make any sense - the things shouldn't, on what it costs to make, be that expensive. And in terms of pleasure the equation's massively inaccurate.
[+] [-] vijayr|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps the answer is that people have gotten used to everything being "free" on the internet. May be they think that the cable (or internet) bill is more than enough, and they are entitled to get everything for free online, including movies etc?
[+] [-] Kurtz79|13 years ago|reply
From an advertising standpoint, the latte example makes sense, because it's something a large chunk of people (in the US/UK) can make a quick mental comparison. In Italy I have seen many similar examples comparing goods and services to an espresso, or the price of going out for a pizza.
It's a given that for many people the 2 bucks spent on a Latte are completely worth it: I don't see why anyone should find the comparison offensive.
It's not like someone is criticising how you spend your 2 pounds. It's advertising. If you don't find the argument valid, just keep enjoying your Latte, and life goes on as usual.
[+] [-] onli|13 years ago|reply
Sure those people exist, but don't forget that not all are like that. I wouldn't even consider spending that much at a coffee shop, especially not regularly.
[+] [-] davidjgraph|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|13 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, that local coffee shop will probably still be standing there in a week, doesn't hold your card info (just swipes it temporarily), and you can go back and pound them in person if they do something wrong.
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quaunaut|13 years ago|reply
Yes, your coffee is great and wonderful, it's what you look forward to, etc etc. I'll first say that the majority of people don't have such an intimate connection to coffee, so congratulations for being a special little snowflake. I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there.
I don't even drink coffee and I get this analogy they're making. Most of us on this site are making more than enough money to sign up for dozens of these services per year and literally not give a shit. That doesn't mean we should, but the fact that they are that cheap DOES imply that there is little risk other than to your time(and if you don't have time, why are you on that site? Or here, for that matter.).
And before anyone says, "Well if that's the only argument they have for trying their product, it's justified.", I'd first say that I've never seen someone stupid enough to do that before, and I'd second say that's still bullshit, because your problem isn't with the coffee line, it's that they gave you no information as to what the product is. Come on.
This isn't to say you should try every product there is out there, but this is such a throwaway, worthless, immature argument to make that honestly I have to wonder how you didn't think to yourself beforehand, "Didn't the time it take to write this cost me more than my fucking morning latte?"
[+] [-] mrspeaker|13 years ago|reply
I bet the author enjoys writing too: so creating that blog post might cost more than a latte - but the experience of thinking, writing, editing and posting something online provides value to the author. Seems like a reasonable thing to do then!
[+] [-] ignostic|13 years ago|reply
Retorted a very angry person, disagreeing sharply with a short, lighthearted post written about how enjoyable latte is.
From the sounds of it, you're a bit out of touch with the common man these marketing lines are trying to reach. If they were trying to appeal to you, they would say, "hey you, come be super negative about other people's ideas! There's an endless selection of directors and producers to call stupid and childish!"
A few bucks a day still matters quite a bit to me. And I love latte. And I really liked the post.
[+] [-] Articulate|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kqdreger|13 years ago|reply
It's a valid argument to make that, to him, comparing product cost to an experience he truly enjoys isn't the most effective way to convert him into a customer. At the very least it's something to consider for anyone who works with marketing.
[+] [-] adrianhoward|13 years ago|reply
The point of the article as I read it is not that £2 is cheap - hell I come from a generation where the idea of charging £2 for a cup of bloody coffee seems insanely expensive - but that you're not spending the £2 because it's cheap. You're spending it because it brings you significant value.
Selling yourself on cost, especially comparative cost to a different product/service, is not - in my experience anyway - a terribly effective technique outside of commodities. For just the reason outlined in this article. Sell on value instead.
[+] [-] yawgmoth|13 years ago|reply
I'm fairly certain this is why you're having trouble relating to the enthusiasm of the author. I'm not even joking - the reward response to coffee is huge.
[+] [-] ronaldx|13 years ago|reply
Coffee gives a guaranteed positive experience - you know what you're getting - and the latte is not the only reason for that.
People are happy to pay for coffee even if there's a fair chance the coffee will be bad. If the service is good, and you get a relaxing place to sit and work, and you get a caffeine hit, that's usually more important than the product. Money spent on coffee is never wasted - you always get more value than the amount spent on the whole experience.
If you buy an app and it's bad - that's the end of your experience.
Even if your coffee is bad, you will likely get a refund or replacement, if you care to spend a second to ask.
If your app is bad - the money's gone and you have no recourse. You might be able to fight your way to a refund (but you probably will view it as sunk cost) and there's no way you'll get a better app as a replacement.
App developers who use the throw-away line "less than you spent on your morning coffee" need to be more aware of what they're comparing their experience to. Apps really don't compare well.
[+] [-] praptak|13 years ago|reply
Then it is very stupid to buy it, so the "less than your latte" argument becomes "make a small stupid decision because you made a large one". Not very appealing.
[+] [-] lsc|13 years ago|reply
...
>I don't even drink coffee and I get this analogy they're making.
I think those two quotes are related. You don't understand.
...
>I wouldn't say that with such disdain if not for the fact that you clearly think the world of your coffee, yet can't bother to think for the extra two seconds it takes to realize that there is definitively something in your life you buy regularly, that is of no use to you, that you get more because it's simply there.
caffeine is by far my favorite addictive drug. It's special in that most other drugs that are even close to as pleasurable carry with them significant dangers, or, at the very least, interfere with my ability to work effectively. Caffeine is the opposite; not only does it feel good, it makes me far more effective.
Like most addictive drugs, though, the delivery mechanism? it tastes really good to the regular users. And much like old scotch, fans can get something out of relatively small differences in process. I mean, I am okay being actively dependent on caffeine in ways that I'm not okay being actively dependent on alcohol, so price does matter more... I've got a moderately high threshold for "expensive" when it comes to whiskey, for instance, 'cause I'll go through a few bottles a year. If I needed a double to get up every morning, I'd pay more attention to how much the stuff costs.
But yeah, uh, middle-class people regularly paying extra for "special preparation" of their drug of choice is a luxury, to be certain, but it is a very traditional luxury.
[+] [-] 6d0debc071|13 years ago|reply
I honestly can't think of anything. I shop for food once a month, (mostly online) pay my water bill, buy myself new clothes from time to time, car repairs and fuel, pay my martial arts teacher, obviously I've got to buy hair-care products and stuff like that so I don't look atrocious, I spend a reasonable amount on books. But I can't think of anything I just impulse buy and get nothing out of. I don't tend to impulse buy at all - I'm not the sort of person who walks into a shop unless I know there's something I want to buy in there. I find my money goes much further if I make a few high-value purchases that are really nice.
Heck, truth be told I rarely buy coffee. When I used to work in an office I bought an atomic coffee maker and a hot-plate - which I still have - and we made coffee in the office which was vastly nicer than the stuff at the coffee shop.
I suppose from time to time I go out to eat or drink, but there you're buying a social experience as well as the food and it's not clear to me that your $ to pleasure ratio isn't going to be vastly superior to coffee there.
Some people do waste a large amount of money, but I find it hard to believe it's a universal. What is it you think I'm likely to be wasting a lot of money on?
[+] [-] why-el|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SandB0x|13 years ago|reply
I see a lot of friends struggle to get the money together for a summer holiday, yet every month they're spending £9.99 on Spotify, £5.99 on Netflix, £20 on Sky, etc. Gym memberships in London can easily run to £50 a month but you can haggle them down, same goes for phones - friends of mine are spending like £45 a month on their latest iPhone contracts.
Not sure what I'm getting at. Just that it's easy to make living a modern life very expensive if you're not careful.
[+] [-] lucian1900|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kablamo|13 years ago|reply
The way I like to think about it is to figure out how big of a nest egg do I need to earn enough of a return to cover that expense in retirement. For example, I would need an investment of $18,000 which earns 4% avg annual interest to cover my $2 daily coffee expense forever.
Its fun to think of all your expenses this way and as you build your investments you can see how much of your lifestyle is paid off forever!
I built a little calculator to do this math for me: http://networthify.com/calculator/recurring-charges
[+] [-] mtkd|13 years ago|reply
There are a tools like CodeClimate or Creative Cloud that I think people are not using personally because the costs are too high.
I believe, with tools like that, that if you make the 'personal use' fee trivial you get a wider base that will go on to introduce it commercially at work - so you net more over time.
20 years ago, as a student, I made this case to IBM on OS/2, I won 'letter of the month' in the internal magazine - they didn't change the pricing for personal use.
[+] [-] umsm|13 years ago|reply
When looking at my finances, food is always #2 every month right after housing.
[+] [-] chris_wot|13 years ago|reply
I love my coffee, and I love Burn Notice. Possibly in equal measures. Sometimes I watch Burn Notice while drinking a coffee. Sometimes my children and wife join me. Life is often good.
[+] [-] lmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quesera|13 years ago|reply
You don't have to get all romantic in your notions of intangible value from lattes (or the rituals therearound, etc) to justify the idea that you're happy to pay for something with a known reward (even if it is honestly only marginally rewarding), but hesitant to pay for something with an unproven (and possibly negative) reward.
Secondarily, I'd argue that when you fall back to intangibles to justify your actions and expenditures, you should consider (just for the value of the experiment in doing so) skipping them for a while. A month or two or three. Sample new habits and rituals. You might prefer them.
[+] [-] mcormier|13 years ago|reply
""It's only £2 - less than your morning latte."
I see this a lot, Netflix being the famous recent example. On the surface it seems reasonable; if you would spend this much on a small cup of coffee, why not spend it on our product instead?
But comparing to my morning latte is actually an incredibly high bar to set. What's valuable to me, as a human, is not the coffee itself but the experience. I spend half the morning looking forward to it, and half the afternoon in the afterglow. There's not just a drink, there's a place to sit and relax, free-flowing internet, pictures on the wall, and a waitress who fakes enough interest in my day that I actually believe it. Heck, at the café I'm writing from now the coffee itself is downright awful. But the moment I sat down I felt an eagerness to write. I've got more done in ten minutes here than in the four hours at home preceding it.
A cup of coffee might not be worth £2. But happiness is, and that's what I'm buying. If you want me to buy your thing for £2, it had better bring this much joy into my life. Otherwise, I'd rather have another cup.
[Home](/)"
[+] [-] dylangs1030|13 years ago|reply
I think everything you said is true, and in addition, I believe we've been conditioned to be more welcoming to physical purchases. A physical purchase of $10 is a concrete, observable deficit that we can touch and hold. A $0.99 purchase online is virtual...it's an unbounded abstraction with no immediate anchor for our enjoyment to dismiss as a "good buy."
[+] [-] kephra|13 years ago|reply
This is a classical example of doing css+js wrong.
Loading the page with js disabled, shows a blank page. Disabling css, shows the content in a nearly non readable way, with extremely long lines. Looking at the source tells me, that its not even HTML.
[+] [-] kyle_t|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praptak|13 years ago|reply
Not so with the $2 downloads. There's a bajillion of them not capped in any way, so the only way to cap this part of the budget is to be aggressively selective about what you pay for.
[+] [-] chrisvineup|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
Suggesting that they buy half a dozen and just delete the ones they don't like is met with a look as if I suggested sawing their own arm off.
Predictably their phones are just jammed with apps that they never use but keep because the "paid good money" for.
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
Assuming you want to simplify spending choices to this degree, be realistic:
If it's Netflix, it's closer to $10 a month for unlimited usage. If it's a latte, it's more like $4 per day.
If you only buy one latte, and only on weekdays, that's in the neighborhood of $86 per month.
So if you accept the idea that you should select the thing that brings you the most "joy" for the lowest expenditure, then unless you plan to get Netflix and then just not use it at all (or if there's nothing on it you want to watch), it's clearly providing more value for a lower investment.
As I said... the whole thing strikes me as a bit silly and seriously presumptuous, but it's also pretty unambiguous which option "wins" if you consider it past "x and y cost the same" without bothering with the frequency of payment for both of them.
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
You could save money by making it yourself! And then you'd have to:
.... I could go on.I buy my americanos at the coffee shop.
[+] [-] jumblesale|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Kaivo|13 years ago|reply
The only thing on which I almost never count my money is food and drinks. I agree that it doesn't make sense to not have problems throwing money for a coffee that lasts a few minutes while not wanting to spend money on a movie or an app. I get what the author says there, but the experience he describes is only a once in a while deal for me. For instance, I buy Earl Grey tea because it tastes good for the amount of money I put in it. It's less than $0.10 per tea cup, which seems more than fine considering the amount of time I spend drinking it. However, most of the time, the less pricey food/drinks I can find often turn out to be the worst in terms of healthiness. We shouldn't count bucks when it comes to that.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|13 years ago|reply
I agree that it's kind of a silly argument to use for Netflix. High-tech services need to market themselves by their inherent value, not by comparison to a commodity.
[+] [-] EGreg|13 years ago|reply
Since we're on the topic, I would like to point out that drinking coffee in the morning -- while by itself not harmful -- may be a symptom of a harmful roller-coaster schedule where you have to rely on substances to wake yourself up throughout the day. With a healthy schedule, you may as well try apples and an extra 10 minutes of morning exercise.
You know what would really be of a lot of value to me? Agreements between distribution networks to get each other's content when one doesn't have it, kind of like "roaming" for cellphones. If they had such a service, I'd pay the premium every time I want to watch a movie one of them doesn't have the rights for.
[+] [-] dylangs1030|13 years ago|reply
I've personally seen many people buy things just because they're shiny and they could. On the app store, this translated them to buying hundreds of dollars of apps just because they were 1. "cool" (i.e. never open them again), 2. well marketed, and 3. trendy. Because they couldn't feel their wallet emptying, they just kept buying and were surprised at the iTunes receipt they later received, shocked really.
That's an extreme example, but it illustrates my point well.
[+] [-] xanadohnt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawlessone|13 years ago|reply