*****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****



Hallmark, in Kansas City, has quantitative researchers on staff who do
	network analysis of which people buy what cards for whom.



On Jan 1, 2006, at 5:55 PM, Richard Rothenberg wrote:


> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****
>
> Folks:
>
> It is often amazing how much marketing firms and industry analysts  
> know about such things.  A quick look around the net turned up at  
> least four firms that would be happy to supply such data in  
> available reports for as little as $4000.  The only free thing I  
> came across (and it was a cursory look) was at http:// 
> findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_1999_Nov/ai_58293774
> and a brief writeup said that 2.6  billion Christmas cards are sold  
> annually, about 38 per sender, and that about 80% of cards are  
> purchased by "middle aged" women...
> Anyway, there is a boatload of information about numbers out there.
>
> Rich
>
>
>
> Barry Wellman wrote:
>
>
>> *****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org  *****
>>
>> Rebecca Adams has pointed me to a story in the New Scientist that  
>> claims
>> the average person sends out 68 Xmas cards which reach 154 family  
>> members.
>> URL is:
>> http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/christmas/ 
>> mg18024265.900
>>
>> Warning: Data from a very biased, small sample, and a self-interested
>> scholar . But it would be nice for some INSNA person to organize data
>> gathering on this for next year -- taking some care to collect  
>> such data
>> -- even the hoary university student samples would be an improvement.
>>
>> I am NOT offering to organize, but would participate, especially if
>> Chanukkah and New Year cards were included, and care were taken to
>> separate out traditional greeting cards, e-cards (only got 1 this  
>> year --
>> from Japan) and Xmas/New Year's letters, both e-mail and print.
>>
>> Barry
>>



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