We the "Pesky Parasitic Pests"/Students of Singapore, bring business to Starbucks.

Today, I finally realised that we students in Singapore are like pests. Just as the rats, cockroaches and lizards seek out unlikely places in everyone's home to breed, we students seek out unlikely places in Singapore to mug, (or "study", if anyone doesn't know the slang). Well, at least this applies to this particular period of the year, where both the A levels and O levels are approaching.

Just when I thought that I found the perfect place - with a nice, quiet ambiance, almost Zen because of the general lack of traffic - to mug, the place was crawling with all these other students hording the place when I came back the following day.

I can't help but to draw such a parallel between pests and us Singaporean students. It is really the perfect metaphor, in my opinion.

Also, we are quite the parasites. Just like how fleas are difficult to get rid of - and even when we finally do, they just keep coming back; we students are quite reluctant to leave a place once we've settled down, and we just keep coming back too. Even if the employees try to chase us away, or get us to consolidate our tables, more of us just keep coming and eventually overrun the place. If we are banned from the place, we simply find another "mugging ground" like how fleas just hop onto another animal to find new breeding grounds. To the employees, it is like pushing against a wall of water.

Speaking of which, the airport is now overrun with students. It's like a classic zombie horde scene such as in Dead Rising, where high density areas get overrun with zombies. But oh, whatever the case, this calls for me to find an alternative place to mug.

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We pesky parasitic pests of Singapore get our fair share of student-icides sprayed into our face, but nevertheless, we bring business to the places that would otherwise have a generally low traffic, even though we hog up the spare capacity of the areas.

Case in point, Coffee Bean vs Starbucks Coffee. It used to be the case where Coffee bean had been utilizing "student-icides" in practically all of their chains around Singapore - i.e. "No Studying" signs placed on every table and on the counter. On the other hand, Starbucks had been more open to such "parasitic" customers, even explicitly placing a "Happy Studying" signboard at their counters. It was also nice for them to inform people when are the peak hours of their business so as to give an idea when we students should consolidate our stuff together to continue studying; or just leave when the crowds really get too unmanageable without angry customers.

The problem with Coffee Bean is that although they free up tables for more customers to arrive, they end up losing the bulk of their customers, which are students. Of course, I must clarify once more that I'm only referring to the generally more remote chains in Singapore. In the end, Starbucks seems to be more crowded than Coffee Bean all the time.

Traditionally, most consumers in Singapore follow a "herd" mentality where if one sees a long queue outside a hawker store - or any store, for that matter - he/she will naturally think that the store is selling good stuff - especially food. Since we generally have no opinion (which partly explains why Singapore is such an anomaly in the political sense), the effect of us following whatever the rest of the "herd" is doing is amplified in Singapore; when applied to the situation of seeing Starbucks being more crowded than Coffee Bean, we would think that Coffee Bean sucks, and Starbucks is the shizzzz. Naturally, crowded eateries and restaurants attract more customers, while business becomes extremely slow in Coffee bean.

Only recently do I see Coffee Bean slowly retracting their bans on students, but the damage to their reputation has been done, and there is now a larger consumer base following Starbucks. Furthermore, consumer loyalty usually plays a huge part in the F&B business, and people just go back to Starbucks rather than Coffee Bean. In the long run, perhaps Coffee Bean might be able to make a come back. However where students are concerned, there are probably more students loyal to Starbucks, and these students will later on become the bulk of customers for Starbucks rather than Coffee Bean. This will give even more business to all the Starbucks chains in the long run because of customers who were loyal since they were students.

This can also explain why Starbucks recently came up with the Starbucks card. Since coffee bean recently lifted their ban on students and are now open to students, Starbucks has to come up with a new way to capture and retain more customers in order to maintain their market share for the student consumer base.

It's only logical that they come up with a consumer loyalty programme that provides additional benefits for consumers such as "every 13th drink is free", and "free drink on birthdays" in order to compel students to buy more Starbucks to obtain that free drink. This in turn provides a great incentive for students to study at Starbucks more often and reap the potential benefits from consuming more Starbucks. This attracts more students and keep them loyal to Starbucks, essentially offsetting the move by Coffee Bean to open their chains to students who want to study. Then again, Coffee Bean also has a consumer loyalty programme similar to Starbucks - but the damage is already done to Coffee Bean from the initial ban of students.

However, despite all these market tactics, I still think Starbucks coffee tastes more superior to Coffee Bean's. The coffee produced in Coffee Bean seems to me like a glorified cup of "kopitiam" coffee. In my opinion, comparing Starbucks with Coffee Bean is like comparing Coffee Bean and "Kopitiam" (not to be confused with the eatery chains of the same name) coffee. Whatever the case, Coffee Bean is inferior to Starbucks. However, it is not like when my pocket money decreases, I would opt to drink more Coffee Bean than Starbucks - no. They are still considered to be within the same category of goods. If my pocket money decreases, it is more likely that I'd buy more "Kopitiam" coffee instead, since the price of Coffee Bean is not very significantly lower than Starbucks. But hey, it's still inferior in terms of quality in my opinion!

I guess this is just my 2 cents in this Starbucks vs Coffee Bean thing. It's up to you to decide whether you agree with me or not.

Dante out.