Easter

Anna Christopherson

Mrs. Straub

Economics

29 March 2015

Easter

Every year Easter is celebrated throughout the United States. It comes at the perfect time to stimulate the economy after things may have settle down since St.Patrick’s day but before Mother’s Day which is the next holiday to give a little boost to the economy. This year according to National Retail Federation, consumers will spend $16.4 billion on mainly food, gifts, candy, decorations, clothes, and flowers (Consumers on the Hunt for Candy, New Spring Apparel This Easter). As you can see from the graph below which shows the amount that

adults spend on Easter each year has increased as the economy has gotten stronger since 2008. This trend line is quite similar to the U.S. overall GDP trendline.

Many people probably think that most spending occurs on candy but it’s the third most. The source goes on to provide the spending breakdown, first is actually food with $5.3 billion, then surprisingly clothing with $2.9 billion, and then candy with $2.2 billion, followed by $2.4 billion on gifts, $1.1 billion on flowers, $998 million on decorations and $695 million on greeting cards (Consumers on the Hunt for Candy, New Spring Apparel This Easter).

The $2.2 billion dollars consumers spend on candy has three main producers with a few others that creates an oligopoly of the Easter candy market. The four main products from producers are the chocolate bunnies, chocolate eggs,  flavored chicks, and jelly beans. According to statsticbrain.com, 70% of easter candy that is purchased is chocolate and 90 million chocolate bunnies are produced each year for Easter (Easter Statistics). Chocolate eggs though are almost as popular though, according to cadburyworld.co.uk, “Every year over 80 million boxed chocolate shell eggs are sold not to mention all the Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs” (Easter Brand Fact Sheet).

That means that the 30% of the non-chocolate candy is made up of mainly chicks and jelly beans. Easter Statistics also says, 16 billion jelly beans are produced each year for Easter (Easter Statistics). According to marshmallowpeeps.com, more than 1.5 billion PEEPS® are consumed during Easter (Easter Basket Favorite PEEPS® Offers Variety for Everyone). These four are above the rest of the candy in the Easter market but that’s because they are iconic and mainly associated with Easter. Sure, Reese’s or Snicker’s eggs are good substitutes along with Starburst beans for the top brand Cadbury eggs and Jelly Belly jelly beans but then you sacrifice taste.

Even through the rough economic times Easter only dropped a few billion of dollars in consumer spending which leads me to believe that the demand is always going to be strong making the main easter goods inelastic. While peoples incomes dropped they still continued to buy Easter goods thus Easter goods are normal goods.

Bibliography

"Consumers on the Hunt for Candy, New Spring Apparel This Easter." NRF. National Retail Federation, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2015. <https//:nrf.com/media/press-releases/consumers-the-hunt-candy-new-spring-apparel-this-easter>.

"Easter Basket Favorite PEEPS® Offers Variety for Everyone." News. Just Born, Inc., 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. <http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/news>.   

"Easter Brand Fact Sheet." Cadbury World. Cadbury.co.uk. Web. 30 Mar. 2015. <https://www.cadburyworld.co.uk/schoolandgroups/~/media/CadburyWorld/en/Files/Pdf/factsheet-easterbrands>.

"Easter Statistics." Statistic Brain RSS. 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2015. <http://www.statisticbrain.com/easter-statistics/>.