Ordering coffee these days feels like a personality test and takes almost as long as walking your dog. You cannot go to McDonald’s and order a cheeseburger, but asking for a McCheeseburger might get you out of trouble. So just how happy is humanity about having so many products to choose from?
First of all, I don’t think the problem here is the great number of options available to consumers. Within the basic context of democracy and that of a free market, having choices is good. Having more choices is even better. The problem, then, is that advertising creates what seems to be new products. That’s why you need an Italian dictionary to order a coffee in England.
However, this situation is more than the result of advertising creating products that only seem new. Brands such as Starbucks use Italian names for their coffee for the simple reason that Italian coffee is widely appreciated as high quality coffee. Therefore, Starbucks plus Italian quality equals brand quality. Surely, there are more reasons as to why products today seem so complicated, but the bottom line is that behind any frappuccino there is the old-fashioned coffee.
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