Japanese changing their tea for coffee?

Seven hundred of the world’s 13,000 Starbucks stores are in Japan, and in need of expansion; especially in the crowded urban areas.

Tea loving Japanese are changing their preference to coffee. Is a single brand responsible of changing this millennia-old habit? If so, which brand?

This brand is The West. After the West proved military superiority to Japan by the 1800s, Japan wanted to become as powerful as those countries. This was the dawn of great Japanese traditions and the beginning of westernization. So coffee drinking is only one the acquired western habits that is displacing the tea tradition.

But is coffee drinking originally from the West and tea drinking originally from Japan?

Debate: How much are consumers really in control?

We hear this a lot and many of us claim that consumers are the ones who are really in control of our brand. How much of this is true?

When creating a brand, how much is the cost, corporate strategy, bottom line objective and competition is taken into account vs. consumer opinion?

Debate: Are Private Labels fair for consumers?

In all of the categories Private Labels have entered, they are either leaders, or growing faster than the category. Private labels extend their retail name to a brand, transferring the confidence placed by their consumers as a retail store. Besides this, they tweak a couple of other very important variables to achieve success: price and shelf space and location. They will occupy the hottest shelf space and place the category leader right besides them. Then they advertise (with in-store publicity) that their price is lower.

It has proven, without a doubt, to be a successful strategy for the retail stores. Consumers are buying more of these brands than many other brands.

How fair is this for a consumer?