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Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

joshlehman.com

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Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#91

Post by PaulHoule »

Uck.

Starbucks sucks.

If you're in New York or San Francisco it's true that Starbucks has chased away the independent coffee shop and you might think it's a good cup of coffee.

It ~was~ a good cup of coffee 15 years ago, but now every population center with 50,000 or so people has an espresso bar that puts Starbucks to shame.

The exception is a few big cities that Starbucks put up a store every half block or so, probably to make Wall Street investors think that every site from Cinncinnati to Omaha is stuffed with them.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#92

Post by alexanderh »

crazygringo wrote: post #81

Wow. The negativity of the comments here to this post is astounding. I personally find this post very insightful. Just yesterday, I bought the EA Tetris app for $0.99. I played it for three minutes, and decided I hated the "touch" interface for Tetris. It isn't Tetris at all. And it pissed me off that I paid money for something useless. It doesn't matter if I paid $20 for it or $0.99. It just makes me feel like a foo…

I would say review systems and internet research negates most of the 'gamble' involved with most app purchases. But I guess most users are just mindless consumer zombies.

There are a few instances where you "wont know till ya try it yourself"... but they're few and far between with proper research.

I think it really speaks to the expectation of developers here that users are expected to "gamble" on app purchases without knowing whether the app is good or not by reading reviews, and general consensus. Thats a really exploitative purchasing pattern to expect from your users...

Not saying there arent plenty of dumb people to pray on, but... yea.. wow. A lot of app store developers here on HN just expect their users to be dumb ill informed "johns" to exploit for a dollar on a gamble... That really says something.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#93

Post by tlogan »

tptacek wrote: post #47

Horrifying. The point about the coffee cup comparison isn't that cups of coffee are the benchmark experience for product pricing; if that were the case, my next root canal would cost $0.20. The point of the coffee cup comparison is marginal utility : the money you spend on an expensive cup of coffee almost certainly has very little utility at the margin, because you are happy to chuck it away for a bad cup of coffee.…

Situation in Apple App Store is actually much better then selling it via web. You could actually convince some people to buy your app for $1.

Convincing people to pay for anything on the web is much much harder. A know few real-estate agents which have all their data in Dropbox but they don't want to pay for Dropbox storage and constantly terrorise colleges with Dropbox invitations so they can get some more storage. Go figure.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#94

Post by joshlehman »

andrewfelix wrote: post #59
tptacek wrote: post #47

Horrifying. The point about the coffee cup comparison isn't that cups of coffee are the benchmark experience for product pricing; if that were the case, my next root canal would cost $0.20. The point of the coffee cup comparison is marginal utility : the money you spend on an expensive cup of coffee almost certainly has very little utility at the margin, because you are happy to chuck it away for a bad cup of coffee.…

Well said. "Starbucks Craftsmanship" ? Please. Not sure what artisans you have running Starbucks cafes in the US, but in Australia the barristers are largely low paid teenagers using un-cleaned machines and second rate beans. To top it off most of the drinks have dollop of cream or some other sugary ingredient to mask the awful quality of the coffee. I would gladly 'gamble' 99c with an iPhone developer over a Starbuc…

I'd say feel free to replace "Starbucks" with any other purveyor of a product you enjoy at around this price point.

When I say craftsmanship what I'm really referring to is the overall brand that Starbucks (or other coffee shops) have built. A brand that says "what you get here will meet your expectations".

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#95

Post by xiaoma »

tptacek wrote: post #47

Horrifying. The point about the coffee cup comparison isn't that cups of coffee are the benchmark experience for product pricing; if that were the case, my next root canal would cost $0.20. The point of the coffee cup comparison is marginal utility : the money you spend on an expensive cup of coffee almost certainly has very little utility at the margin, because you are happy to chuck it away for a bad cup of coffee.…

On the other hand, if people all made such rational comparisons about marginal utility, not many people would be paying $100/month for TV channels that only allow them to watch certain shows at certain times and are full of interruption based advertising and not many people would be flushing $15 down the drain to go see a 90 minute movie instead of buying a month's membership to World of Warcraft and getting tens or even 100+ hours of enjoyment out of it.

The thing is that some people want what they want and they don't care about the long term investment angle. So they're willing spend $8 on a beer at a bar instead of having something healthier and cheaper like water. A lot of those same people won't spend $8 in a year on apps, no matter how rational a case the author might make. In general, food, alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes are more effective than software for generating these kinds of poorly-planned impulse buys (though a lot of Chinese gaming companies have been doing well with free-to-play games and micro-purchases for the past 6 years or so).

In retrospect, I think I've only bought three apps in my nearly 4 years of having an iPod touch, one of which cost 99 dollars. It's a heck of an app, though, and has been in development for longer than the iTunes store has existed.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#96

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #88
dasil003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hating Starbucks since 1993 where at my first job at a movie theater we shared a trash compactor with them, and those bastards would never press the button, so you had to stand in the smelly garbage room and wait for it to compress their garbage before you could throw yours in. It would be years before I could actually afford to buy a coffee from there. Now I live in London, and as far as I can tell, all th…

> Now I live in London, and as far as I can tell, all the good coffee is made by Aussies, In New York, Swedish coffee (of all things) seems to be the up-and-coming thing: http://www.fikanyc.com/about http://www.konditorinyc.com/ No idea why. Scandinavia is exotic and hip these days, probably. Then again, a lot of new Swedish things are popping up, like Swedish pizza places (which, if you haven't had it, mostly revolv…

Whether through politics, skill, or home ground advantage, the Scandinavians have been doing all right in the World Barista Championships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Barista_Championship

So they can at least make a decent cup.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#97

Post by chollida1 »

The big reason the cup of coffee vs app analogy doesn't hold is that my iPhone really only has space for about 30 apps.

I'm a big music/podcast listener so I only afford enough space for about 30 apps. For a $0.99 app to be useful it has to has to beat out apps like Shazam, kindle book reader, bloomberg anywhere, evernote, etc.

The likely hood of an app at any price doing this is pretty low.

For me this is why the analogy doesn't hold. Price has nothing to do with it.

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#99

Post by Bro_Merch »

Schwolop wrote: post #86
dasil003 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hating Starbucks since 1993 where at my first job at a movie theater we shared a trash compactor with them, and those bastards would never press the button, so you had to stand in the smelly garbage room and wait for it to compress their garbage before you could throw yours in. It would be years before I could actually afford to buy a coffee from there. Now I live in London, and as far as I can tell, all th…

I'm an Aussie coffee afficionado, and the best coffee I ever had in London was at Monmouth. No idea of the address, but it was about 5mins walk from the modern art museum, on that side of the Thames, near a food market. As if that'll help... :-)

I'm in the US and you have all really got me curious about the Aussie coffee. I too hate Starbucks and find it quite bitterly me a pot that's been on all day).

Unfortunately I just prefer Big Coffees off the shelf brand, but don't know what to try. Just that it's not Starbucks.

Is there somewhere that I can order Aussie coffee from and know its actually the coffee you describe and not just branded 'Aussie'?

Re: Stop Using The Cup of Coffee vs. $0.99 Cent App Analogy

#100

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

cwp wrote: post #51
greggman wrote: post #41

Stop using Starbucks vs App analogy People try new restaurants all time spending between $10-$75 per person. They are often disappointed. People try new foods all the time (hey look at these new nuts, this new sports drink, this new natural pasta, this new gluten free cereal) Starbucks is a known brand. If you liked the last game made by Sid Meier you'll probably like his next one. Starbucks vs Apps is the wrong anal…

If I try a new restaurant and they don't bring my food to the table, I walk out without paying. If the food is horrible, I can send it back. If I pay the bill, I'm acknowledging that I got something of value. I may not decide to go back, but at least I'm not hungry any more. The same applies to your other examples. If the projector malfunctions when I'm watching a movie in a theatre, I get a coupon to come back anoth…

> If the food is horrible, I can send it back.

You CAN...but legally, you can't walk out on the bill. Even walking out after ordering is illegal, as I understand it. And if one thing that arrives is terrible, then are you really going to trust that something else will be better?

Probably not. So are you really going to walk out without paying? Most people won't, and you would be breaking the law if you did walk out.

Google already did an experiment in a 24 hour return policy. Guess what? A HUGE percentage of games -- GOOD games -- got bought, played for 8 hours, and returned.

A game for $0.99 isn't intended to be a lot more than a few hours of enjoyment. A $60 game may need at least 16-24 hours of solid content, but a $1 game is still a better value if it can entertain you for three hours. The 24 hour return policy was a stated reason several big developers refused to develop Android games, so Google changed it to 15 minutes.

One extreme to the other. Sigh.

Regardless, this whole thread is completely missing the fact that A LOT of good apps have demos/samples that you CAN try for free, and people still complain and whine about having to actually PAY $1 for a game they can find out for free that they like, or an app that they can find out for free works just fine for their purposes.

AND, you can look at reviews to see if the app works. When you go to a random restaurant, you don't get a pile of reviews pasted to its front door that you can read to find out if it's any good. In the world of apps, you CAN see reviews at the point of purchase.

And I hope you posted bad reviews (after contacting the app developers to see if they could help you!) on the apps you bought, to warn others.

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