A Decade From Now, Investors Will Be Calling This Starbucks’ Smartest Move | Business Markets and Stocks News | host.madison.com

A Decade From Now, Investors Will Be Calling This Starbucks’ Smartest Move | Business Markets and Stocks News | host.madison.com: It is becoming more and more normal for consumers to pay for their coffee on their morning commute by whipping out their smartphone and pressing a button on an app several minutes before arriving at their favorite coffee house. If all goes according to plan, upon arrival, all they have to do is exit their car, run in, grab their cup of coffee on the counter, and run back out. These types of transactions are blurring the line between traditional in-store purchases and e-commerce.

At the recent Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, PayPal Chief Executive Dan Schulman noted this very phenomenon:

I think the first thing to think about in-store is that mobile is blurring the distinction between online and offline. What do I mean by that? If you order something online and I go into a store and pick it up and tap your phone, was that an in-store transaction or was it an online transaction? It's kind of a combination of both, and you're seeing that happen more and more frequently right now.