Craft Coffee is Everywhere! Research Explains How We Got There

hubie writes:

The push toward specialized products, including your cup of coffee, is transforming markets as big and small firms inspire one another:

A time traveller from the early 1990s would be baffled by the coffee marketplace of 2022. What's latte art? Or grind uniformity? Or single-origin beans? And who cares anyway?

That time traveller would discover that a lot of people care and care passionately. Just as the markets of once-mundane items like beer, beignets, chocolate or meat have diversified and specialized to appeal to more discerning consumers, so too has the coffee market.

Connoisseurs commonly discuss defining aspects of third-wave coffee such as tasting notes, regional characteristics and roasting techniques. Coffee consumption has surged in the past decades thanks in part to the growth of the craft coffee community, and big commercial players are taking notice.

[...] "Craft firms believe that products or services should be a highly aesthetic experience," Dolbec says. For example, in coffee, the aesthetic experience - the acid notes of the brew, the latte art, the aroma - are all highly valued by craft coffee producer and consumer alike.

This contrasts with commercial firms, which seek first and foremost to maximize their profits, and whose products are designed to appeal to mass markets. Yet, the study finds that commercial firms are increasingly responding to the rise of craft firms by drawing inspiration from their highly aestheticized products and service.

[...] "All types of firms elaborate to compete against one another," Dolbec says. "They adapt innovations from firms of the same type, they transform innovations from firms that follow a different logic and over time that leads to craft logic becoming more present in the market. Just as you have Tim Horton's talking about homemade espresso drinks, you'll start seeing craft firms selling their own kinds of coffee pods."

Journal Reference:
Pierre-Yann Dolbec, Zeynep Arsel, and Aya Aboelenien, A Practice Perspective on Market Evolution: How Craft and Commercial Coffee Firms Expand Practices and Develop Markets [open], J Marketing, 2022. DOI: 10.1177/00222429221093624

Original Submission

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