How an Online Platform Can Get Employed by Businesses Discussion

Philz Coffee
As a coffee connoisseur, I am always trying to find the best cup of coffee money can buy
near me. Although, the pursuit for the perfect cup of coffee ended after I tried my first
cup of Philz. Philz coffee consists of 25 years worth of experimenting and perfecting
customized blends brewed one cup at a time, making for an unmatched fresh cup of
coffee. Philz coffee recently extended their shops to Southern California, after exclusively
being located in Northern California for ten years. In 2018, Philz Coffee launched its
mobile app – ensuring every customer can get the perfect cup, made to order, without
waiting (Work & Co, 2018).
When the pandemic started in 2020, Philz coffee transferred to a remote, and safer, way
of ordering coffee. If a customer wanted Philz, they needed to download the Philz app.
This way, customers ordered and paid through the app and the only in person contact
customers had to encounter was picking up their ready-to-go coffee at the door of their
local Philz. Although the pandemic forced me into mobile ordering, I will never go back.
The ability to seamlessly pre-order coffee, select a pick up time, and track the progress
of my order made the experience of getting coffee so much more efficient and pleasant.
I believe many would agree that waiting for their coffee is not an experience one craves,
so the ability to skip that process makes this app desirable.
The purpose of the Philz Coffee app is not solely to promote and market their drinks
and food for revenue in return. This app also sells the culture of Philz and serves as an
interactive platform. Philz is a community centered company, where their culture is built
on kindness, generosity, and connection (Philz Coffee, 2016). Although the process of
ordering your coffee is entirely remote, Philz still manages to maintain their culture of
personal connections. When placing your order, the format allows you to fill in the
blanks of a conversation you would have with your barista in person. On the screen,
customers will see ?I?ll have? and then are able to select a variety of options (hot or iced,
cream or sugar, etc.) to complete their order. By having the layout of ordering mimic the
dialogue one would have with their barista, the Philz app is able to continue to promote
their culture of community and personal connections. Additionally, after one orders their
coffee, the app tells you exactly who will be making it (by name), and shows you a
picture of that person with the ability to contact them directly regarding your order further promoting customer and barista connections. By selling consumers the Philz
culture through this app, this app will in turn steer consumers towards buying their
products.
Most of the local Philz coffee shops display advertisements for their app. Therefore,
Philz targets this app towards their familiar customers. Philz customers make for a
widely diverse demographic, with the majority being those who drink coffee, aged
anywhere between a teenager to the edlery population. Although, this demographic
must be cut down to those who are comfortable with the use of smartphones.
Therefore, this app’s demographic is the younger generations such as Gen Z and
millennials.
The Philz app?s biggest competitors include other coffee mobile ordering apps – such
Starbucks and Peet?s Coffee. The simple yet effective design of the Philz app makes it
more appealing to those of a similar scope. Some consumers can become overwhelmed
by the wide variety of drink options an app, such as Starbucks, can have. The Philz app
makes it easier to make a decision, with fourteen coffee blends (ranging from dark to
light) to choose from. Further, what makes the Philz app stand out against others is their
attention to personal connections and community. As previously mentioned, the app
tells you exactly who will be making it, and shows you a picture of that person with the
ability to contact them directly regarding your order. This is a personal touch I have not
seen anywhere else.
As soon as you open the app, it takes you to the ?My Philz? home page. This page
shows you your recent orders, so it is easy to quickly reorder your favorite go-to coffee
without having to go through the trouble of selecting your preference (milk type, sugar,
etc.) again. The Philz app is sleek and simple. It is tastefully colorful, as each coffee blend
the consumer swipes through is surrounded with a different color. Additionally, there
are descriptions of each blend of coffee with a picture displayed next to it.
Although this app may be quite niche, it deserves credit for its unique and admirable
approach to mobile orders. I believe other mobile ordering apps will follow Philz lead in
their community divine style of getting your perfect cup of coffee.
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Instagram?s Rise to the Top
Social media has been constantly evolving over the years to meet the
increasingly high expectations of its users. One platform, Instagram, has taken over the
world of social media, boasting approximately 1 billion active users in 2021. Instagram
has become wildly popular for sharing photos and short videos, either privately among
a group of one?s followers, or publicly with the world. Additionally, new features are
constantly being added, such as the ability to shop for products within the app. This
application was created in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who simply wanted
a platform to share ?good-looking, edited, photographs? (Evans). Many people had the
same wishes when it came to using a social media platform, contributing to the overall
success of this platform throughout the years. Instagram has evolved, but has not
strayed from its original purpose of providing a platform to post photos, maintained its
target audience, proven itself competitive in the context of the market, and composed
an incredibly aesthetic platform for its user base.
Instagram is best known as a simplistic, aesthetic, photo sharing platform. Its
users enjoy the ability to document their lives as little or as much as they please, some
putting days of thought and effort into editing their photos and deciding on the perfect
captions, while others simply take seconds to post what comes to mind. This broad
spectrum of users is what makes the social media giant so unique. It has been
interesting to see the shift of the social norm of only following one?s friends and family
extend to users following celebrities and influencers and having somewhat of an
investment in their lives. In fact, those who did not open their accounts as celebrities or
well-known icons have been able to make incredibly successful careers out of their
Instagram platforms, ranging from cooking/baking influencers to models.
Instagram is an app used by a somewhat younger demographic, having 31% of
its users range from ages 18-24, and 31.2% of users range from ages 25-34 mainly due
to its evolving purpose (Statista). One of the main uses of the platform is to connect
users with friends and family in order to maintain or revive relationships, and to feel
invested in other?s lives. Additionally, the younger generation feels that it is important to
keep up with the shifts of social trends, such as learning how styles are evolving. It
seems as if this demographic enjoys being able to portray their authentic selves, and can
post about activities, hobbies, careers, etc. that truly interest them. These topics may not
appeal to older generations, which could be the reason that many of them do not
choose to partake in being an Instagram user.
There are a few notable competitors that have been attempting to take the
spotlight away from Instagram?s platform. One of these competitors is TikTok. This
relatively new platform allows its users to post relatively short creative videos to tell a
story, promote a business, etc. This concept appeals to the same younger demographic
as Instagram and has been able to gain a notable amount of popularity from the time
that it was released in 2017 to today. To combat this app from taking Instagram users
away from spending more time on their platform, Instagram introduced Reels. Reels is
similar in concept to TikTok, where users are able to create short, creative, captivating
videos to post to the platform. When users open the app, there is an icon brilliantly
placed at the bottom center of the screen where they can click and scroll through Reels
mindlessly. Many deem it incredibly addictive and can spend hours doing merely
scrolling through content. Another competitor is Snapchat, which is also very similar in
concept to Instagram, yet more private in a sense. Snapchat?s main purpose is to share
photos and videos to as many people as the user chooses for a finite amount of time
before being deleted. This also appeals to the younger generation who enjoy the idea of
having what they send or post not being visible and connected to them for more than a
few seconds or up to one day. Instagram viewed this as an opportunity to introduce
Stories to their platform, where users could share photos or short clips that would
automatically disappear after one day. This pseudo Snapchat has become increasingly
popular among Instagram users, where they can repost news, share updates, photos
and videos of themselves, etc. Instagram has been resilient to its competitors,
successfully and quickly adapting to make its platform a combination of the most
popular forms social media to maintain and grow its user base.
Throughout the years from its release date, Instagram has been changing its
aesthetics to make the platform more user friendly. The icon of the app itself is very
vibrant and colorful, easily standing out from other icons on one?s home page of their
phone. When the user opens the app, they are struck with quite a bit of stimulation. The
most recent post of one of the accounts they follow takes up most of the page and
users can scroll through their feed for additional new content. A small section on the top
of the page is reserved for an array of stories. The bottom of the page has icons so that
the user can choose from the home page, the search page, Reels, shopping within the
app, or to view their own profile page. The overall background of the platform is white,
so that it does not take away from what users are posting, and all the icons are outlined
in black as a stark contrast. The layout is incredibly clean, simple, and easy to view for
hours on end. Overall, the app is very easy to navigate to make the user experience
more enjoyable and not overwhelming for its user base, making it an excellent choice
for those who wish to pursue a social media platform.
Instagram will most likely continue to evolve for years to come, persuading many
of its users to continue to stay with their platform due to not straying far from their
original purpose, staying within the margins of their audience, searching for and
implementing ways to become more competitive in the market, and having an easily
accessible layout. While other platforms have tried to take the spotlight away from
Instagram, they have not succeeded due to its unique ability to bring people?s lives and
ideas closer together. This app has rightfully earned its top position in the world of
social media among the younger generation, their loyal users, and will continue.

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