In its current issue, Fast Company magazine has a story about the first Starbucks to open in Dublin — an event that columnist Keith H. Hammonds suggests will force existing Irish baristas to reconsider their business models, or face possible extinction.
“This is the Starbucks effect,” writes Hammonds. “It happens every day, and it affects us all. It is the hallmark of our global economy — the continuous emergence of new competitors with superior business models that force us to reconsider the viability of what we’ve always done. And it will only grow more intense.”
“[T]he Starbucks effect is not a global imperative,” Hammond adds. “There’s nothing inevitable about it.”
Perhaps not.
But what does seem inevitable about the Starbucks Effect is that we will continue to be subjected to the underlying rhetorical device. Already, it seems like just about every business reporter in the land has taken a shot at coining some new Corporate Effect or another.
What started with the reasonable-enough Wal-Mart Effect — a term economists created to explain in part the extreme pricing pressure that the retail behemoth places on a wide array of competing businesses — quickly begat a crowded field of copycats that can be difficult for even the most discerning of news consumers to keep straight. What, for example, is the difference between the Coke Effect and the Starbucks Effect?
Herein, an idiot’s guide to Corporate Effects:
The Wal-Mart Effect (June 6, 2006, the New Zealand Herald):
“Much of the secondary US productivity gains from ICT [Information and Computer Technology] can be put down to … the ‘Wal-Mart effect’ where large businesses can make rapid substantial productivity gains by applying ICT in a big way to stock control and ordering systems.”
Notes on Usage: Popular business buzzword, now apparently gaining momentum among the Kiwis.
The Kmart Effect (January 29, 2002, Financial Times):
“Retail real estate industry braces for Kmart effect: Property brokers are preparing for lost leases and requests for lower rents.”
Notes on Usage: Pretty much a synonym for the Wal-Mart Effect. See also: the Target Effect.
The McDonald’s Effect (July 20, 2005, Financial Times):
“It is my guess that the ‘McDonald’s Effect’ is fuelling demand for budget hotels. Your stay, like your burger, may not be marvelous. But you know what you are going to get.”
Notes on Usage: Codeword for the continued evolution of modern life towards super-sized, super-convenient uniformity. For alternative usage, see McMedia.
The iPod Effect (November 23, 2005, USA Today):
“The day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of holiday shopping — and the nation’s retailers are nervously eyeing such possible hazards as the weather, the stock market, the General Motors job cutback plan and consumer confidence as they try to guess how sales will go. More than a few hope cool new consumer-technology products — the ‘iPod effect’– will lure shoppers.”
Notes on Usage: Journalistic shorthand for “journalists love Apple.”
The JetBlue Effect (October 13, 2005, the Boston Globe):
“The JetBlue Effect has kicked in. Just a day after JetBlue Airways Inc. unveiled plans for Boston-New York flights for as little as $69 round trip, American Airlines Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc. slashed their own fares by as much as 80 percent yesterday to match JetBlue.”
Notes on Usage: Good way to imply that someday all businesses should be required to provide free satellite TV.
The Coke Effect (August 17, 2005, the Seattle Times):
“Call it the Coke effect. After a Seattle School Board decision last year to ban sales of soft drinks and junk food, school administrators are facing the loss of tens of thousands of dollars.”
Notes on Usage: Kind of like the Starbucks Effect without the risqué undertones of lefty, beatnik, anti-globalization fanaticism.
The Home Depot Effect (June 6, 2004, the New York Times):
“We are a do-it-yourself nation. Call it Emersonian self-reliance, bootstrapping individualism or the Home Depot effect, but many Americans would rather take care of the home front themselves, thanks. That applies to selling their houses, too.”
Notes on Usage: Overused rhetorical device. Now available for do-it-yourself bloggers. No professional assembly required.
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.