There’s two types of people in your neighborhood coffee shop right now: Those who can’t get enough of pumpkin spice lattes and those who want to hurl every pumpkin to the moon. That moneymaking “flavor of the week” has turned into months, and it seems to come around sooner and sooner every year.
And none of it is an accident — it’s all psychological.
Part of it is the pumpkin itself. It’s a fruit you associate with autumn and Halloween, and it’s often mixed with other spices, such as nutmeg and cloves, to provide a bit of warmth to your palette. But the other part is the fact that you know the pumpkin flavors aren’t going to last forever. Your brain tells you that you need to get it now, before it’s too late.
“Your brain is saying ‘there’s only this window of time where I can take advantage of this wonderful beverage when I swing by Starbucks,’ and so it’s now become part of our routine,” said Hank Boyd, a clinical professor of marketing at the University of Maryland.
It’s the same reason your coffee shop will move from pumpkin to peppermint flavors sometime in November.
“It’s almost like a Pavlovian response,” Boyd added.
Of course, your FOMO for pumpkin is also a reason why pumpkin spice season might be starting sooner than you thought — too soon for some people, in fact.
“In theory, they say ‘we’ve got to keep the exclusivity, but how far can we push the envelope?’” Boyd said. So while it might start in late August, “at some point, they’ve got to say ‘enough is enough, we can’t go any further and we’ve got to keep this window.’ If you offered it all year, it loses its whole appeal. It’s not special anymore.”
“Scarcity is something that drives us,” he added. “’If I don’t act now, I’m going to lose and wait a whole other year,’ you will definitely come in and you’ll see the numbers spike.”
Between August of 2023 and July of 2024, it’s estimated Americans spent nearly $817 million on pumpkin spiced products, down from the year before but still up by over $200 million compared to 2020, according to the market research firm NIQ.
“From a business standpoint, you’re saying, ‘How far can we extend that window to where it still has that scarcity effect happening and folks are once again having all those great associations with that time of year for that particular product?’” Boyd said.
“We’re accustomed to getting things whenever we want them. The time where there’s a certain product, there’s a certain service out there that’s kind of rare, the fact that I have to wait for it makes it even more desirable,” Boyd said. “That’s what’s kind of cool. So from a marketing standpoint, we won’t give up playing that card.”
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