CUriosity: Why are we so obsessed with pumpkin spice?
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梆紳泭CUriosity, experts across the CU 勒貊勛圖 campus answer questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.
Heather Kennedy, who teaches marketing at the Leeds School of Business, explains the cultural phenomenon that is pumpkin spice and why Americans can't seem to quit it.
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Pumpkin spice season doesn't arrive anymore. It invades.
Every fall, pumpkin spice claims a little more territory. Grocery store shelves overflow with pumpkin spice creamers, cookies, spreads and cereals. These days, that relentlessly seasonal blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice has moved well beyond food, turning up in everything from body wash and face masks to garbage bags and multipurpose cleaner. The craze has even reached the afterlife, in the form of a pumpkin spice casket.
How did such a humble baking spice become an annual cultural event? According to泭Heather Kennedy, an associate teaching professor of marketing at CU 勒貊勛圖, the answer has as much to do with psychology as flavor.
People love fall. They love the sense of it. They love the ritual around it, Kennedy said.
That's part of what gives pumpkin spice its staying power. The flavor has become shorthand for autumn, bringing to mind everything from changing leaves to cozy sweaters to Thanksgiving pie.
When we associate a flavor to that, it gives us a sense of nostalgia, Kennedy said.
Starbucks didn't invent pumpkin spice
Pumpkin spice may feel like a modern invention, but the flavor has been around almost as long as the United States.
References to pumpkin spice appeared in cookbooks in the late 1700s, Kennedy said. By the 1930s, McCormick was selling pumpkin pie spice blends in stores.
When Starbucks introduced the Pumpkin Spice Latte in 2003, it moved a flavor people knew from their kitchens into something they could sip on their morning commute.
Starbucks really created something that already existed culturally, Kennedy said. They commercialized something that already existed in the minds of consumers.
Why pumpkin spice keeps winning
Pumpkin spice benefits from an established marketing principle: making people wait for what they want.
That limited amount of time creates scarcity and creates a certain excitement around it, Kennedy said.
After all, there's nothing stopping Starbucks from selling Pumpkin Spice Lattes year-round. But the drink vanishes each winter and reappears every fall, turning its arrival into an annual event.
It becomes ritualistic that every fall, I'm going to have a pumpkin spice latte to kick off the season, Kennedy said.
But pumpkin spice didn't go viral just because Starbucks kept talking about it; it went viral because everyone else did.
Starbucks let go of control of the messaging and not only allowed but encouraged people to create social media content around the excitement of pumpkin spice, Kennedy said.
As consumers posted photos of their first PSL of the season and debated whether pumpkin spice was arriving before fall itself, the drink became something bigger than a seasonal promotion. Love it or hate it, people still can't stop talking about it.
Too basic to fail
Pumpkin spice may be wildly popular, but it also has plenty of critics. After years of pumpkin spice products spreading from coffee shops into nearly every corner of the grocery store, some consumers have developed a case of pumpkin spice fatigue.
People get tired of it, Kennedy said.
As coffee shops roll out banana bread lattes, pecan cortados, caramel apple cold brews and other fall alternatives, some consumers seem eager to move on from pumpkin spice.
The flavor has even acquired an unflattering label: basic.
But Kennedy suspects the backlash may be part of the secret.
People love to talk about it and post about it, she said.
Every fall brings a new round of eye-rolls, jokes and declarations that pumpkin spice has finally gone too far. But all that attention keeps the flavor in the spotlight.
Kennedy has another theory about at least some of the critics.
People think it's basic, and they don't want to be associated with it, she said. But I'm going to guess that some of those people are secretly buying a pumpkin spice latte.
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