How great is this? Starting July 1st, Starbucks will be offering all customers at all of their company-owned locations FREE wireless internet access. The franchise stores aren’t in on the deal. But if they’re smart, they’ll join in the fun with internet speed. Why? Because it’s brilliant.
No more multi-step process to get online, or worrying if you’d exceeded the two-hour mark for free internet access with their Starbucks loyalty card. That’d mean you’d have to start paying $3.99 and hour. How much more encouraged will you be to choose the local Starbucks over elsewhere when you can get delicious and comparatively healthy food and beverages all day, plus good music and a nice clean atmosphere?
Of course the above time limit probably helped to encourage people to move on and not take up space without buying more stuff. The thing is, Starbucks has been losing customers to McDonald’s ever since they started offering free wi-fi and cheaper McCafe coffee not long ago.
Chris Brogan, president of a social media marketing agency called New Marketing Labs, blogged about it this way: “They said, ‘Not only do we have free Wi-Fi, but we’re going to offer this huge raft of digital products you can get while you’re here, and you like our coffee better anyway.’ ” That should be on Starbucks billboards!
The Starbucks Digital Network, will (eventually) sell you stuff online. For now, it hopes to attract people with free access to paid sites like The Wall Street Journal and Zagat, plus partnerships will allow them to offer free iTunes downloads and previews of not-yet-released movies and albums. They’ll also feature local content based on the location and help for job-seekers using Starbucks as their resume-sending base.
Tags: Internet Speed, Wi-Fi