What does the Starbucks pricing glitch say about its China strategy?

A system glitch during Starbucks' March 8 Women's Day promotion let some customers in China buy two grande drinks for 9 yuan. The promotional price was meant to be 49.9 yuan for two drinks. Starbucks fixed the bug quickly, but screenshots and order stories spread fast on social media, and some buyers had payments canceled and refunded after checkout.

The incident lands amid an ongoing coffee price war in China. After Luckin scaled back its 9.9 campaign, brands like Cotti and Tims ran short-term 9.9 promotions to win share. Starbucks had said it would compete on market rather than price, and its success in China now depends on balancing that stance with consumer expectations for discounts.

After Luckin's 9.9 campaign was scaled back, brands like Cotti and Tims rolled out short-term 9.9 promotions to grab market share. Starbucks, which once declared it would "compete on market, not price," recently suffered a system glitch during its March 8 Women's Day promotion, accidentally letting some consumers buy two grande drinks for 9 yuan. This loophole quickly sparked a frenzy of deal-hunting on social media, with some successfully placing orders and others having their payments canceled and refunded after checkout. Starbucks quickly fixed the bug, and the promotional price returned to 49.9 yuan for two drinks. This incident not only gave consumers a taste of the thrill of "snagging a bargain," but also reignited discussions about the coffee price war.

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After Luckin's 9.9 campaign was scaled back, multiple brands successively launched short-term 9.9 coffee promotions to attract consumer attention, such as Cotti's 9.9 storewide discount and Tims' weekly 9.9 campaign celebrating its 60th anniversary. These campaigns successfully captured the spending preferences of loyal fans after launching, bringing considerable sales growth to stores.

Starbucks, once dethroned from the top spot in China's coffee industry, previously stated at an earnings conference that it would "compete on market, not price" going forward. Its recent launches of various new products also show Starbucks catering to Chinese consumer demands, with new drinks and merchandise mugs all featuring market-oriented changes.

However, Starbucks, which maintained a proud stance claiming it would not join the 9.9 price war, was found by netizens today to have "gone back on its word"!

This morning, netizens shared that they successfully bought two Starbucks drinks for 9 yuan. At first, they thought it was a bug and worried that Starbucks stores would cancel delivery upon discovery, but unexpectedly, the two grande drinks arrived on time—they really scored a deal from Starbucks.

Being able to buy two grande seasonal new drinks from Starbucks for just 9 yuan excited the netizens who got them, who called on friends to hurry and place orders. For a time, social media was flooded with experience-sharing posts, but some netizens suspected that Starbucks' 9-yuan promotion might not have been intentional.

(Starbucks APP promotion image)

As March 8 Women's Day approached, brands launched many promotional campaigns to attract female consumers during the holiday, and Starbucks was no exception, offering a limited-time promotion of two grande drinks for 49.9. But something must have gone wrong before the campaign went live—many customers found the actual payment amount was 9 yuan instead of the 49.9 stated in the promotion rules.

Netizens who rushed over upon hearing the news reported that after discovering the deal, when they re-entered the mini-program or Starbucks APP, the relevant campaign page could no longer be opened. The 9-yuan-for-two-drinks system bug was also quickly fixed by Starbucks at the first opportunity. Apart from the quick-handed ones who successfully grabbed the deal early on, netizens who followed the trend could no longer seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Netizens who couldn't buy two drinks for 9 yuan were very unwilling to accept it: "An expired deal is like arsenic—I was just a few minutes late," "Why doesn't this kind of good thing happen to me!", "Missing out hurts me, but others' success hurts me even more," "It's always expired candy that gets pushed to me."

Not all netizens who successfully placed orders were happy either. Some reported receiving a text message from Starbucks after payment, informing them that their successfully paid 9-yuan order had been canceled and the payment refunded—"grabbed the deal but didn't get it."

Starbucks has now fixed the system bug, and the payment amount for orders on the March 8 campaign page has been restored to 49.9. For regular Starbucks customers, 49.9 for two drinks is a considerable discount compared to Starbucks' regular prices, but consumers still hope for more exciting promotional prices that can stimulate more people to place orders.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.