Mother's Day By The Numbers
Poor Mom. It’s not that we don’t all love her, but with the bum economy, the houses we can’t sell and fears of a Wall Street meltdown, we’re just not looking to spend, you know, as much on her this year.
So while the $15.8 billion the National Retail Association says Americans will shell out for Mother’s Day in 2008 sounds like a lot–and it is 38% more than in 2005–it’s just about the same as what we spent last year.
“Consumers will be very cautious with their wallets this Mother’s Day, heeding Mom’s advice that she really doesn’t need much,” Phil Rist, spokesperson for BIGResearch, the group that collected the data for the NRF study, said in a press release. “Gas prices and other economic issues will still be at the forefront of people’s minds as they shop around for the perfect gift for Mom.”
The NRF predicts that of the 84.2% of consumers celebrating Mother’s Day, the majority will invest in “one major gift for mom instead of several smaller gifts.” The researchers expect $3 billion to get plunked down on restaurant tabs, $1.2 billion on electronics (including digital photo frames and cameras), $2 billion on flowers and $672 million on greeting cards.
A caveat–the polling data BIGResearch gathered for the survey was collected during the first week of April, from about 8,000 consumers who were asked what they expected to spend on Mother’s Day. Since then, fuel prices have popped almost 30 cents, hitting $3.61 per gallon on average this week, compared with $3.32 a month ago, according to AAA. “This could cause a hit in the numbers,” says NRF’s Kathy Grannis.
Still, the holiday has a couple of trends on its side. Shoppers who spend the most on Mother’s Day are among America’s most free-spending–the 18- to 24-year-old set is expected to run up, on average, $170.71 for Mother’s Day, compared with $153.17 for 25- to 34-year-olds and $145.86 for consumers between 35 and 44. The youngest group, Grannis says, not only has fewer personal bills but more “mothers” to shop for: grandmothers, sisters, spouses, daughters and in-laws, all of whom may deserve Mother’s Day well-wishes.
Tags: cards, day, free, mother, s
I always have been reading up this type of experiment and its neat to finally see the video of the famous Stanford prison experiment. I am curious what would happen if it went through the whole 2 weeks. I remember one time I went in holding(reason is confeditional) and just for that 1 night I went crazy. I tried sleeping but just feeling powerless and submissive really got to me and I started losing control over my humanity. It wasn’t the fact that being surrounded by other people that was in holding but it was the fact that I was in this cage. If you want to see a human become more on their animal side put them in a cage for a day or 2. An average human being can’t control itself very long when they feel trapped. That can go for physical intrapment, spiritual, and psychological.
Hillary: 1258245 / total (2300542) = 0.54693415725511640300416162799897Obama: 1042297 / total (2300542) = 0.45306584274488359699583837200103Hillary won by 0.093868314510232806008323255997,or 9.4%……….. not double digits. 9.5% is when you round up.
cool, i read about this several years ago and always wanted to learn more about the project.
I’m used to old stuff on digg, but usually it’s “internet old”, i.e. 6 months at best. But tonight, the Russian Space Shuttle and The Stanford Prison Experiment? Diggers truly are 10-15 year olds that haven’t heard of anything pre-Netscape.Makes me feel old.
This is so old…… I heard about this back when I was in college.
There is a really good German movie called “Das Experiment,” that is a lot like this.
I found randomly found the prisonexp.org on the net a few years ago. It led me to taking a psychology class, in which a few friends and I made a movie fairly similar to this for the class. I think a lot of the students reactions were, like TheDrunkMonkey said, based on what they had seen in movies, so of course they took it to the extreme. gmillered: I assume you’re referring to Abu Ghraib, in which case parties responsible are being punished. I’m one of those ‘kids’ volunteering my time in Iraq. Putting everyone into one group because of a few ignorant people is pretty lame. I’m 19 and carry more responsibility on a daily basis than an average person does in his/her lifetime.
prisons should be illegal