Living The Starbucks Lifestyle

Admit it: you smirked when you first read that Starbucks was going to start cross-promoting movies, music, and books alongside its $6 lattes. That’s okay – they expected the ridicule. “Yet the chain is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture… [and] the more cultural products with which Starbucks affiliates itself, the more clearly a Starbucks aesthetic comes into view: the image the chain is trying to cultivate and the way it thinks it’s reflecting its consumer.