Starbucks Consumer Cultural Theory

The consumer cultural theory perspective touches most noticeably on consumers as social beings. In a culture, human behavior is shown in connection with values and norms that are constructed as guidelines. Thus, when individuals select and justify their behavior and values objects and the behavior of others, values and norms can be regarded as the criteria (Fraj & Martinez, 2006). In connection with this theory, drinking coffee has been an essential part of social life for a long time and it is considered as a culture. Ellis (2006) describes that drinking coffee initially originated from the central European coffee culture and this was transferred to Scandinavia that took it up gradually as a coffee drinking culture. As stated in chapter 1.1, drinking coffee in Sweden is considered a social institution. In this perspective, most of consumers from the observation came to Espresso House together with company and

Groups are formed around taste, where people develop preferences by checking others and changing their own behavior, to fit in or to stand out (Skove, 2010). Nowadays, the Swedish café style has been changed from the Vienna style to the Americana style off serving coffee that is heavily influenced by the coffee cultural idea of Starbucks as described in Chapter 1.1 (Kjeldgaard & Ostberg, 2007). The Appendix A shows that the majority of consumers ordering drinks prefer to have the latte kind with skimmed milk such as Cafelatte, Cappuccino, Mochalatte, etc. Also, Stina (interview, November 26, 2015) and Lars (interview, November 30, 2015) from the interview commented that they prefer to have a coffee with steamed milk and with some syrup at cafe since it is difficult to make it at home. Hence, the excessive latte drinking behaviour that is the Americana style is formed around specific styles for consuming coffee influenced to Swedish coffee culture stemming from global