Do you? My relationship with dell isn't just about getting warm fuzzy feelings when I call our rep to order stuff, it's about knowing that, if I do have a problem, it's going to get resolved immediately when I call her.

There is another company that I work with, which is small, and specific to my industry, and I have a very good relationship with one of the sales people there (they're in Canada).

Well, one day, something went wrong with their product so, instead of calling and asking to talk to a CSR, I called and asked to talk to Al. Al apologized up and down because, unfortunately, the FedEx guy had already come and there weren't any more pickups for the day.

So do you know what he did? Got in his car and drove the part that I needed down to the fedex office at the airport. I had the part in my hands a little over 12 hours later.

Another one: Our office buys all of our toner from cartridge world. The guy that we talk to down there, his name is Kent, is really nice. One day, I called Kent and told him that I needed a toner cartridge for one of our printers, but I needed MICR toner (for checks). Unfortunately, he told me, they didn't have any that I could get that day, but they could ship me one in a week. But in the meantime, he would bring me a printer of theirs as well as a cartridge for it, and he wouldn't charge me for it, just thanks for always doing business with him.

This type of thing is absolutely invaluable to my business.

We'll be a Cartridge World customer for life because of this. We're not buying toner from them, we're buying the ability to print documents. I suspect that you're not buying RAM, you're buying servers that work. Do you think anybody from micron is going to jump in their car and bring you something when you need it? Or care that something got messed up and fix it for you immediately?

When I go to a coffee shop, a lot of times I'll sit there with some of my friends and work on a project at their tables, or I'll use their internet, or read a book, or whatever. The $2.5, or $4 or whatever that I'm paying for a cup of water run through ground up beans is mostly paying the for a barrista to ask me how my day is going so far, and for the table. It's like a day-hotel; the table is my room, the person at the counter is the front-counter clerk, and the $4 is my room fee.

This is fine, I'm more than willing to pay $4 for a coffee when I'm going to be sitting there for 5 hours working (in fact, if I'm staying this long, I'll usually buy more than one cup of coffee even though I don't need it.). The $4 is insane for a cup of coffee, but I'm buying more than just coffee.

Starbucks is the same thing, but a bit more interesting (I think). When people go into starbucks, they're paying $4 because they want to feel like members of the cool kids club. The coffee has names that you have to be a member of the little club to understand, the interior is very starbucksy, there is obscure "art" on the walls, etc.

This makes sense. Yeah, you could go to the gas station across the street and get something that tastes about the same, but then you wouldn't have access to the cool kids club. The $3 difference between a gas station cappuccino and a Starbucks "coffee flavored milkshake for adults" is the membership fee.

The trick here is that Starbucks (as well as their competitors) now also runs coffee shops where you can't even go inside. You can't stay there, there is no obscure art, no atmosphere, no nothing. You drive up, get your coffee, and leave. You probably even finish your coffee in the car before anybody has chance to see the familiar logo that means "cool kid".

So why do people still go there and pay the $3 membership fee to a club that doesn't exist?

Because they've been tricked into thinking that they're buying coffee.