With the Easter holiday right around the corner, stores have been supplying many of our favorite easter treats. From Reese’s chocolate eggs to peeps, stores are willing to supply these many candies, as they know that there is such a high demand for them at this time of year. However, much of the candy that is currently on the market as Easter candy, usually ends up sticking around in its normal form throughout the year. Unfortunately, Peeps don’t quite work this way, and are most often gone by the end of the Easter holiday. This in itself is one of the reasons as to why peeps do so well in the market at this time of year. Because of this, it limits the amount of peeps that can be supplied in these stores, and therefore creating scarcity.
Consumer tastes also has an effect on the demand of these peeps as well. Oftentimes when a person thinks of Easter, they think of candy as an important component to this holiday. While it’s easy to think that this is simply because of our culture, it actually is all due to advertisements. Because these candy companies put out advertisements for these different festive candies, people have come to believe that it’s important to buy candy for Easter.
Another reason there may be such a high demand for peeps around this time of year, is because in a way, peeps have a monopoly on this product. Sure, technically in terms of candy, this is a monopolistic competition, as there are many different companies out there creating different kinds of candy to sell to the public. However, peeps are a fairly unique type of candy, that no one else as of yet has tried to mimic to sell for their own company. Therefore, there is a high demand to buy this specific brand, because there really are no direct substitutes for this type of candy.
This year in particular, Peeps has added a whole new reason for there to be a high demand for peeps. For this Easter holiday, they’ve added eight new flavors for consumers to try, three of which they’ve left as mystery flavors. With this new addition, there will be an increase in demand for this item this Easter, once again due to consumer tastes and advertisements. With the new item being sold, there will be more people that will want to buy it to try, which will increase the demand for this Easter treat.
Works Cited
Vicar, Nathan. “Peeps Launches New Flavors.” 99.5 WYCD, WYCD, 18 Mar. 2018, wycd.radio.com/2018/02/21/peeps-launches-new-flavors.
Korosec, Kirsten. “Peeps Is Releasing 8 New Flavors-But Only a Few Retailers Will Sell Them.” Fortune, 26 Feb. 2018, fortune.com/2018/02/26/peeps-new-flavors-easter/.
This topic itself is super cool to read about because working for a retailer such as target we get to see all the varieties of candy that there are and how much of each is bought. I was cashiering the other day and almost every transaction involved an easter candy of some sort. More than half of those transactions included peeps. It is weird for me to see that the 8 new flavors were what caused an increase in demand because with all the transactions I did myself, the peeps remained constant with their original flavor. It is typically a tradition to eat peeps on holidays such as easter and I feel like the original flavor is a safe spot for people. Trying new flavors and ruining the idea of peeps just doesn't appeal to most whenever I asked if they tried any other flavors.
ReplyDeleteIt’s very interesting to see that a small candy such as Peeps can really affect the market. I think it is smart how there is only one company who currently produces Peeps because no other company can compete with them. Peeps is a great example of an increase of supply in demand because they are creating more flavors to attract more consumers, which makes the supply of the marshmallows and the prices increase. Since there are no other substitutes for this product, people only want to buy Peeps.
ReplyDeleteI’m not exactly sure if Peeps would be considered a monopoly as it isn’t the only marshmello on me market, nor are they the only candy on the market, so I believe that it would be closer to a monopolistic competition, as they are large companies that are rather difficult to break into the market. The reason that the demand is so high for them isn’t because they are the only easter themed candy on the market, T think it’s because they are just a tradition for so many people.
ReplyDeleteIt's odd how a candy can have a couple weeks during the year where it makes money, and the rest of the year they don't get much attention. In fact, it's even considered "weird" if you eat peeps outside of Easter. Since the window for peeps is so small and the spending is so spontaneous, I do agree that it's hard for the makers of peeps to know how many peeps to make and who to supply them to.
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