By Isabella Green
While in St Andrews the cooling weather and days getting shorter signals a transition into the more academically focused portion of the semester, it also brings with it the joy of autumnal sights and festive celebrations. Stores around town have quickly adapted to these changes and rolled out a plethora of themed products. These products have emerged weeks and months before the events they are made for. While many of the highly anticipated events of the season are still weeks away, they feel closer due to the high volume of related merchandise around us. Many specific varieties of products that could be produced during any season have only recently returned to shelves. Seasonal products traditionally have emerged because of the harvest cycles resulting in different availability throughout the year, a challenge that has been overcome with imports and greenhouses. However, the seasonal products of the present have limited availability only as a marketing technique.
There are many notable seasonal products that have gained immense popularity in the past few decades. Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and other related drinks, represent a 500 million dollar income for Starbucks, in the United States alone. The popularity of the drink flavor has created an abundance of related products, some of which are even non-edible. In Japan, the combined revenue of tourism and limited-time products related to the Cherry Blossom season brings in somewhere between 4.5 and 7.7 billion dollars across several sectors of the economy. While there is a similarly large amount of food and drink options, a constantly growing number of cosmetics and home goods are only available during Cherry Blossom season. In these cases, the products on offer could be produced throughout the year, but are instead limited time offers. There is a strong artificial nature present in this type of marketing. The products themselves are seasonal, as they are only sold during specific times of the year, but they do not meet the traditional criteria of being limited in their production by nature.
A contrasting example would be the fanfare surrounding Oktoberfest. Similar to the Cherry Blossom season in Japan, many tourists flock to the German region of Bavaria in the fall to enjoy Oktoberfest. The celebrations have expanded greatly from their early 19th century beginnings into large festivals with thousands of tourists. While the festivities have grown, the period of celebration is longer year after year, and the production itself is clearly economically beneficial to the region, the commercialization of the holiday is limited temporally and geographically making the commercialization of the festivities much more limited than the previous examples. Additionally, there is much more competition between different companies that produce the most distinctive product of the season: beer. With this strong competition in place, it is more difficult for one company to create effective ownership over the season or create mental links between the consumer and their product specifically.
Some goods and services are actually limited to a specific time such as fresh produce or weather related activities. People know that they will be unable to enjoy these things during any other period of the year so they take full advantage while they are available. However, this is untrue for the many processed goods that are only available for a limited time. These time-constrained offers are also utilized by companies for one-off products and collaborations, with a variety of results. Oreo, regularly releases a variety of limited time offers, including seasonal varieties, with almost a third of buyers not being regular purchasers of the product. Companies take advantage of scarcity tactics to influence consumer decision making. They create a limited supply through artificially limiting the amount of time a product will be available for. Consumers understand that, just with the actual seasonal goods and services, the products that they desire will not be available for very long and they will ‘miss out’ if they do not participate. Visibility also contributes to a desire to purchase goods. As products only appear during certain periods and become highly visible only at those times, a temporal link is developed between consumers and the product. The season and the product become synonymous with one another. If the producer puts the product out earlier, or later, then that is when the season truly begins.
Companies can make strong connections between their product and the season. The consumer forms mental links between product and season, creating positive associations. Products can become as linked to the season as actual weather related activities, creating an immediate demand for the products as soon as they return to the market. With associations being formed between consumers and products, rather than the natural occurrences of the season, there is some cause for concern that the way consumers experience the natural world is through a veil of consumerism. Older methods of determining the season such as the phase of the moon and the blooming of different foliage are unrelated to current fixations on limited time offers. However, this concern is slightly exaggerated as it is entirely possible to enjoy the changing seasons with the products made to invoke the feelings of the season. Certain products may be artificially creating associations with a particular season, and some may wish that they had these products throughout the year. Regardless, companies benefit from consumers maintaining these strong connections. With the changing of the weather and approach of celebrations comes more opportunities to embrace the season that we are in, especially with the help of our festive favourites.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.
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