Sunday 21 November 2004

Pic of the day: Lunch is another matter entirely! Screenshot from the anime Bleach.

Singles don't eat dinner

"When one is alone, food is neither important nor fun. That's why Fjordland's singles-targeting failed."

A few weeks ago, I read this in an article in the Norwegian business daily, Dagens Næringsliv. The writer of the article was rather triumphant, but then again he was a researcher and knew what's going on in the kingdom of Norway. In contrast, this company "Fjordland" had glanced too briefly at the statistics and jumped to conclusions. They decided that with the large and growing number of singles, there must be a market for small pre-packaged dinners. They were disastrously wrong.

***

First off, many of the singles aren't. For starters, an unspecified number are living together in unofficial families, not reporting their real address because they want to leech money from the state through welfare and tax breaks. These are some of the country's most traditional families, where mom stays at home with the kids while dad is off to work. If mom pretends to be single, there's quite a bit of money to be had. But dad is still eating his dinner there, although census data have him living on the other side of the city.

Many are of course real single parents, which are in effect families, only with less money as well as less time. I assume that Fjordland did not count these as part of their market. After all, kids have to eat too. And the products were not marketed aggressively on price, to put it mildly.

Another large group is old widows. Even those of them who still live at home, are likely to have more time than money and certainly won't be shopping for pre-packaged dinners. Besides, they remember the War, and don't squander their money on luxuries.

Some who definitely don't remember the war are young singles between 20 and 30. Here at least we surely have the ideal customer! And so many of them are still single, too! Yeah. Alas, so many of those still live in the kid room at mommy's place. If they want dinner, they can probably get it there. Or if not, they buy a burger. A student who doesn't live at home is not going to shell out for a real dinner.

In short, there aren't many real singles. It is mostly a transition phase, except for a few. Most of these are far from healthy, in either body or soul. I may be the only one who is not disabled, and I don't feel to well either... (OK, there are probably a few healthy singles who just like to have a new squeeze each week, but it is likely much less common than most teens believe.)

Now if someone manages to create a product that somehow targets serial monogamy, then I think they'll get rich quickly. And no, re-usable wedding dresses don't qualify. Something more everyday. Perhaps electronic badges that automatically keeps track of my children, your children, our children and leftovers from earlier marriages who just trailed along by accident ... ^_^*