Starbucks Lowers Prices: Sign of the Apocalypse or Time to Invest? (24/7.com)
When a company can get away with charging upwards of $5 for a cup of coffee, the last thing you might expect from it would be discount coupons. Yet, Starbucks is offering exactly that — $1-off coupons — to customers willing to test the taste of the company’s new “instant VIA latte” versus that made by its baristas. Whether this move is a cunning way to get more customers involved in a marketing survey, or the company’s way of handling a fading product line, isn’t clear at the moment. For investors who don’t care which it is, and just want $1 off of their Starbucks coffee, the “Starbucks VIA Latte Taste Challenge” runs from today through Sunday, Jan. 19. For those who do care, Starbucks introduced the VIA line in an effort to break sales out of its stores and into supermarkets. But it doesn’t appear to need another new revenue stream, as revenues from the last quarter rose 13 percent to $3.8 billion. In this instance, it’s probably not the apocalypse.
