METAMORPHIC BREWS AND MARKETPLACE DYNAMICS: EXPLORING COFFEE'S EVOLUTION AS A CULTURAL ICON

Abstract

Icons include products that are culturally and historically significant in the marketplace. To illustrate the iconicity of coffee, this study argues that coffee is far more than just a beverage: it is a metamorphic product with the qualities to assume different ideologies over time. In accomplishing its scope, this study explores how coffee secured its status as a marketplace icon through the analysis of three epochs in the marketplace identified as coffee waves. As such, coffee represents a distinct and powerful cultural expression of the dominant ideology presents in each wave: the ‘good-life’ (first wave), cosmopolitan (second wave), artisanal (third wave). The study reveals coffee as a metamorphic product due to its metamorphic qualities (i.e., materiality, ritual, meaning, communication). A marketplace icon that conveys distinctive and powerful cultural meanings over different periods of time.