***** 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 >> _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.