Tipping used to be an open-ended question. We decided the percentage and calculated the amount ourselves. Today, it has become a multipe-choice question. Pre-set options along with exact amounts are displayed on receipts or screens. This shift has changed how we feel about the act of tipping.
At Kabuto in Long Beach, the receipt offers three tipping options: 20%, 15%, or 10%, arranged from highest to lowest. It gave me a sense of flexibility, but the order and limited range pushed me toward choosing within a set range.
Lori’s Diner in San Francisco took a more assertive approach. The receipt included checkboxes for 18%, 20%, or 25%, and showed the final total for each selection. This removed the burden to calcuate, but made it harder to say no.
At Eel River Café at Garberville, the screen displayed four tipping buttons for 15%, 20%, 25%, and even 30%. Each amount was pre-calculated and shown clearly, creating a sense of obligation.
What once felt like a personal gesture of appreciation now feels more like a social obligation. As tip percentages rise and digital prompts become aggressive, the tipping experience shifts from a sincere expression of thanks to a manufactured sense of guilt.
The paper presents a model of the evolution of social norms. When a norm is costly to follow and people do not derive benefits from following it other than avoiding social disapproval, the norm erodes over time. Tip percentages, however, increased over the years, suggesting that people derive benefits from tipping including impressing others and improving their self-image as being generous and kind. The implications to the norm of not cooperating with new workers who accept lower wages are discussed; the model suggests that incumbent workers have reasons to follow this norm in addition to avoiding social disapproval.
Stan’s Donut Shop in Santa Clara, California, has been making fresh, hand-made donuts since 1959. It is a favorite place for many people who love classic donuts.
During a recent early morning visit, the shop was crowded with customers. Many were talking to their family members over Airpods which donuts to buy.
The menu offers a wide variety of donuts at affordable prices: classic glazed donuts are priced at $1.75, old-fashioned donuts at $1.25, cinnamon rolls at $3.00, and coffee at $1.50, with refills for just 50 cents.
The shop’s nostalgic ambiance, coupled with the sight of donuts being freshly prepared, evokes a sense of nostalgia that resonates with many customers. This connection to the past, along with the affordability of the offerings, exemplifies why nostalgia marketing is effective at In-N-Out in Long Beach and Cafe Strada in UC Berkeley.
Most marketing and branding activities are essentially concerned with enchantment—the rendering of the ordinary into something special. To create enchantment, companies are increasingly marketing past-themed brands and products. Yet, there is little research about why and how such nostalgia marketing creates enchantment for consumers. Building on different modalities of nostalgia identified in sociological literature (reluctant nostalgia, progressive nostalgia, and playful nostalgia), we analyze the creation of enchantment through a longitudinal, qualitative, multi-method program of inquiry. We find three routes to enchantment grounded in different nostalgia modes: (1) re-instantiation (symbolic retrojection into a past), (2) re-enactment (reflexively informing the present with past-themed brands and practices), and (3) re-appropriation (ludic re-interpretation of the past). By unfolding the different ways in which marketers can press rewind to create enchantment, we discern important implications for theorizing and managing past-themed brands in terms of marketing strategy, targeting and positioning, brand experience design, and marketing communications.
Despite the popularity and high quality of machine-made products, handmade products have not disappeared, even in product categories in which machinal production is common. The authors present the first systematic set of studies exploring whether and how stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) affects product attractiveness. Four studies provide evidence for the existence of a positive handmade effect on product attractiveness. This effect is, to an important extent, driven by perceptions that handmade products symbolically “contain love.” The authors validate this love account by controlling for alternative value drivers of handmade production (effort, product quality, uniqueness, authenticity, and pride). The handmade effect is moderated by two factors that affect the value of love. Specifically, consumers indicate stronger purchase intentions for handmade than machine-made products when buying gifts for their loved ones but not for more distant gift recipients, and they pay more for handmade gifts when purchased to convey love than simply to acquire the best-performing product.
Each commercial space has its own purpose. At a restaurant, we eat food. At a bar, we drink beer. At a cafe, we take a coffee. We rarely drink beer at cafes and we do not ask for coffee at bars. As Google Map shows, cafes are not listed when we search for bars. Similarly, bars do not appear when cafes are searched for.
However, some commercial spaces in Buenos Aires, Argentina serve more than one purpose. For instance, Hobbs Palermo looks like a restaurant. However I ordered a bottle of alcoholic beverage late night and, at a day time, I noticed a person who drank only a bottle of Coca Cola. It is a restaurant, bar, and cafe.
Bar El Federal (or the Federal Bar) is even called as cafe bar. Located in the old downtown of Buenos Aires, it is an authentic pub with wooden interiors and antique bottles. However, some people eat sandwich, others drink beers and even the others read books under the dim light.
We can eat pizza at Starbucks. We can drink coffee at Michelin restaurants. If we overcome the thought that one space should be used only for a single purpose, we will be able to use space creatively.
Vertigo offers a Bangkok’s ultimate rooftop dining experience. Sixty one floors above the city, people dine on premium steaks while feasting eyes on the skyline. When I visited this rooftop terrace, it was neither windy nor noisy, a perfect place to enjoy dish under the completely dark black sky.
However, food they served had very little flavor to me. It surprised me because Thai is one of my favorite cuisines. At first, I suspected that I over-enjoyed the street food that had been heavily seasoned with basil, garlic, ginger, and red chili. Alternatively, the level of spiciness and flavor might have been calibrated for cautious people.
However, I also thought food might taste different at high altitude as in-flight meals are dull and unpleasant. Katia Moskvitch wrote an article about why food tastes different on planes.
… as the plane gets higher, the air pressure drops while humidity levels in the cabin plummet. At about 30,000 feet, humidity is less than 12% – drier than most deserts. The combination of dryness and low pressure reduces the sensitivity of your taste buds to sweet and salty foods by around 30%…
Although we are always attracted by something new, we sometimes try something old to enjoy its authenticity.
For instance, when a restaurant places an nostalgic vintage signboard outside or when it serves dishes in an ugly pot, we infer that the restaurant must have been loved by many people previously. This “old is good” intuition is so strong that it can even distort the quality of the dish.
I recently visited an approximately 15-year old restaurant and ordered a fish soup for two. It was served in a pot that was all wrinkled up. Although this fish soup was not delicious, I enjoyed it simply because the pot of the soup looked old.
Despite the popularity and high quality of machine-made products, handmade products have not disappeared, even in product categories in which machinal production is common. The authors present the first systematic set of studies exploring whether and how stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) affects product attractiveness. Four studies provide evidence for the existence of a positive handmade effect on product attractiveness. This effect is, to an important extent, driven by perceptions that handmade products symbolically “contain love.” The authors validate this love account by controlling for alternative value drivers of handmade production (effort, product quality, uniqueness, authenticity, and pride). The handmade effect is moderated by two factors that affect the value of love. Specifically, consumers indicate stronger purchase intentions for handmade than machine-made products when buying gifts for their loved ones but not for more distant gift recipients, and they pay more for handmade gifts when purchased to convey love than simply to acquire the best-performing product.
