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Odds are decent that you see at least one of these establishments every time you leave the house.  So Hitwise has pulled up some data and examined whether Starbucks or McDonald's will win the high-priced coffee war.

McDonald's, in case you haven't heard, intends to match Starbucks by offering similarly complicated and expensive drinks.  But no one's sure how many people will want to sit and drink them while a bunch of kids scream in a nearby ball pit.

Bill Tancer, the general manager of global research at Hitwise, writes, "The prediction, Starbucks won't lose customers to McDonald's, but McDonald's will be able to upsell their existing customers on the McCafe concept."

Tancer came to this conclusion after seeing (and showing) that visitors to the McDonald's site tend to be younger than those loyal to Starbucks.  Yet the Starbucks crowd tends to own thicker wallets.  And both of these traffic trends seem to align with real-world stats.

It should be interesting, then, to see if Tancer's prediction holds up.  Your humble author, who doesn't drink coffee, will report from the sidelines.