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I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

joshledgard.com

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Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#21

Post by soofaloofa »

shardling wrote: post #13
simonholroyd wrote: post #9

My team has done similar user testing in Starbucks quite a few times. Here's my $0.02: If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. We've found this is a better strategy for a few reasons: 1. It's cheaper. 2. It does not dramatically change the number of test users you can get in a given afternoon. And 3. You're more likely to get critical negative…

> If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. If many people did this, it would quickly become an incredible annoyance. Have some respect for the commons!

They can always say no.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#22

Post by kenbellows »

shardling wrote: post #13
simonholroyd wrote: post #9

My team has done similar user testing in Starbucks quite a few times. Here's my $0.02: If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. We've found this is a better strategy for a few reasons: 1. It's cheaper. 2. It does not dramatically change the number of test users you can get in a given afternoon. And 3. You're more likely to get critical negative…

> If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. If many people did this, it would quickly become an incredible annoyance. Have some respect for the commons!

This. As much as it may work right now, because basically no one is doing it, as soon as it becomes a popular method, it seem to me it will stop working pretty quickly. Everyone doing it will become equivalent to a Jehova's Witness knocking on your door.

That said, I imagine I'd be more okay with it if every time I said yes I got a free coffee.

Aside: I wonder how different reactions would be in different countries/cultures.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#23

Post by kenbellows »

soofaloofa wrote: post #21
shardling wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. If many people did this, it would quickly become an incredible annoyance. Have some respect for the commons!

They can always say no.

The option to say no doesn't make it any less annoying.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#24

Post by snowwrestler »

> He never asked if I’d give him money today for it. He got feedback from someone he didn’t know would be a paying customer or not.

That's because verbal pricing feedback from random people tends to be terribly inaccurate. Most people actually have a pretty poor conscious idea of what they will buy and how much they would pay for a future product.

Many times I've seen people in focus groups say they would pay $hundreds for an electronics product, then reveal that (for instance) they just had to sell their stereo on Craigslist for rent money. (Translation: no way in hell they would actually pay $hundreds for the product.)

This sort of guerilla action is great for usability testing of a mass-market product because the utility of the feedback increases with the ignorance of the test subject. If your product can be understood and used by tech luddites, it will work fine for tech savvies too.

But pricing research needs much more rigorous look at valid data on potential markets and customers.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#25

Post by darkstar999 »

weisser wrote: post #12
aashaykumar92 wrote: post #10

Along the same lines: I launched a social calendar app with my roommate for students at UMichigan and to initially gain users, we bought $55 worth of pizzas and to get a slice, all students had to do was download our app and register as a user--we setup in one of the busiest halls on campus and needless to say, the pizza ran out pretty quickly. Looking back, it was great for the numbers and a was a good marketing str…

Some guys with an app paid for all food orders during a 4 hour block (10pm-2am) at a popular foodtruck at SXSW. All you had to do to get a free ~$7 burrito (some people got a bunch of stuff) was to download their app and create a photo album. While this boosted downloads during that time period I have not looked at the app (I don't even remember what it was called) since. It would have been more memorable if they had…

> I don't even remember what it was called

Don't let that happen, people! If you are paying $7+ just to get someone to install your app, make it worth it!

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#26

Post by mseebach »

will_brown wrote: post #19

Does this remind anyone else of the South Park episode "Free Hat", where Cartman writes "Free Hat" on the advertising poster in the belief that freebies are necessary to attract people?

Well, we clearly learned from the movie that freebies are, indeed, required.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrNrLly1vvM

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#27

Post by teej »

shardling wrote: post #13
simonholroyd wrote: post #9

My team has done similar user testing in Starbucks quite a few times. Here's my $0.02: If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. We've found this is a better strategy for a few reasons: 1. It's cheaper. 2. It does not dramatically change the number of test users you can get in a given afternoon. And 3. You're more likely to get critical negative…

> If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. If many people did this, it would quickly become an incredible annoyance. Have some respect for the commons!

This is kind of silly. Doing street level market research is not a new idea and approaching people directly isn't some huge revelation. There aren't so many entrepreneurs in the world testing ideas that you would ever be affected by this more than once.

Don't be afraid to approach people and ask for their help! Most people would love to know that someone cares about their opinion. There are huge online communities that run entirely off this principle, like Yelp or Quora. If someone's not interested, they'll tell you.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#28

Post by chris_mahan »

soofaloofa wrote: post #21
shardling wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. If many people did this, it would quickly become an incredible annoyance. Have some respect for the commons!

They can always say no.

They can also say "Fuck you" loud enough for everyone in the starbux to hear and for the manager to call the police and escort you out.

I guess in a way that can get your site some publicity, but I gather that's not exactly what you're after.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#29

Post by gertef »

simonholroyd wrote: post #9

My team has done similar user testing in Starbucks quite a few times. Here's my $0.02: If you're willing to be bold, walk right up to people and ask, you don't need to offer free coffee or gift cards. We've found this is a better strategy for a few reasons: 1. It's cheaper. 2. It does not dramatically change the number of test users you can get in a given afternoon. And 3. You're more likely to get critical negative…

Congratulations! You discovered spamming! It's super effective.

Re: I wish I’d thought of that. Operation Starbucks

#30

Post by albemuth »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #17
unreal37 wrote: post #5

Interesting that sitting in a cafe offering people $5 cash for their opinion would be a terrible idea, but offering them a free coffee is brilliant. To @vishl, I don't take food from people on the street. I don't trust it. "What if it's poisoned?" What you're thinking does happen - some people offer me free candies, Reese Peanut Butter cups etc as an incentive to talk to me on the street. I avoid them. The coffee com…

I think psychologically the voucher is worth more because it's something they were already going to spend, it's a tangible saving. I'm not a social scientist or whatever, but logically I think that's how people may look at this offer. I definitely agree that if you're not producing the consumable that's a benefit too (although of course they'd probably use $5 cash to buy a coffee).

Dan Ariely has written about research around this topic: http://danariely.com/2009/08/05/the-trouble-with-cold-hard-c...
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