Is your organization prepared to sell tickets to the hordes of people looking for a little Valentine’s Day fun?
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
People Want Experiences For Valentine’s Day. Are You Ready for Them?
Is your organization prepared to sell tickets to the hordes of people looking for a little Valentine’s Day fun?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I found this article particularly odd, but timely! I never thought a Valentine's Day as a very money oriented holiday. I mean clearly it was made up by capitalist greed, but isn't every holiday! What I found very interesting about this article was the fact that it says that many people single people go out and spend an abundance of money. I always assumed it would be the other way around where couples would be spending the majority of money on Valentine's Day, and singles lay low, or at least spend less than a couple would. My shock was also at the fact that men spend nearly double what women do. I definitely thought it would be the other way around. What also I found interesting, is the fact that now with increased use of technology, there is more shopping done online. I never thought of Valentine's Day as such a holiday that it required present-presents. I always assumed it was just some chocolate and flowers.
I’m not surprised that 39% of people would want an experience over a physical gift. Though you can keep an object forever, memories can last a lifetime and it gives a common bonding experience for the people involved. Also giving candy or chocolate can feel standard and impersonal. You don’t need to know a person that well to get them chocolate for Valentine's day. It’s monotonous and expected. What surprised me about this article was the amount spent on experiences. 3.6 billion dollars is about 18% of the 19.7 billion dollars spent on the holiday. What I think is a little weird about this article is that it doesn’t really give any tips for trying to sell a product for Valentines day besides keeping in mind single people and that many people want experiences. It may almost be more helpful to people trying to buy gifts rather the sell them. However, I understand that it is due to the time of year that this article was published.
With the P. T. Barnum movie coming up and books I’ve been reading recently, I’ve been really interested in the connection between commercial entertainment and the concept of “treating”. Basically, Coney Island was created as a place for young men to take a lady date, have some fun with them on roller coasters, then expect them to have sex with you in exchange for a day of amusement park fun. Take the “Tunnel of Love” as an example; In a sense, this ride was created to sexualize roller coasters and meld commercial entertainment and the “experiential” date with the intentions and expectations of the man paying for this.
So to connect that with this article, I think Valentine’s day is commercializing a feeling. It’s now a universal concept that romanticism and how much someone loves you is based on how much money someone spends on V-Day. That money-spending is followed by an expectation of some sort of exchange.
I just realized this is not a topic that can be articulately explained in 150 words.
I totally agree with this article, I find myself not wanted physical things anymore, beyond Valentine's Day, just in general and the gifts that I appreciate the most are the experience ones. For Christmas my sister and I gave our parents tickets to a show and they were way happier about that then anything we have gotten them in the past. Some of it I think is tied to the way our society is, in that we can have almost anything right away. With Amazon Prime, if you want something and are willing to pay the price tag, you can have it in 24 hours. Experiences are so much harder to come by. I wished that this article talked about actual experiences that they would recommend. Valentine's day is such a Hallmark holiday, but that doesn't mean it is a bad thing - its just what it is, you can make it a big celebration or something small, or just ignore it, thats honestly why I prefer these holidays because their is only as much pressure as you make their to be.
I can't say I'm particularly suprised by the commercialism that is tied to Valentine's Day. Of course we always see the heart shaped candy, the pink boxes of chocolates, and the teddy bears that love you roll out in the grocery store in late December. I think we all already knew that all people bought a ridiculous amount of meaningless stuff on February 14th. So I'm not surprised by the numbers. I personally plan to get a couple bags of chocolate and cry on Tuesday night. I would be interested in seeing more information about entertainment sales, specifically movie tickets, on Valentine's Day. I believe there is a P.T. Barnum movie coming out as well as several fantastic films currently showing this year. How many people will go see "La La Land" or "Moonlight" or "Hidden Figures" in two days? How many people went to see "Deadpool" last year on Valentine's Day (when it premiered)? How many DVD or streams of "Love actually" and "Valentine's Day" are bought in early to mid February? Entertainment is a huge aspect of our everyday lives. We live and breathe to be occupied by art and interesting conversation. I think it's silly to not analyze Valentine's Day as a quest for experiences and entertainment rather than just a great time of year to sell chocolate and fancy underwear.
Post a Comment