Some Business Facts Appropriate for Halloween
Topic: 4) A Random Walk
Thought I would post some business facts related to Halloween (as inspired by a comment from my mother about spending). The facts:


- as reported at www.shoppingblog.com , Halloween spending is estimated to reach $3.12 billion, and the National Retail Federation (NRF) Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey results indicate that the average consumer plans to spend $43.57 on Halloween merchandise this year (approximately 34% of this is on candy and 35% of this is on costumes)
- the population in the United States is estimated to be 293 million (July 2004) as reported in the World Factbook of the CIA
- the revenues of Wrigley exceeded $3.0 billion in 2003, and more than 90% of its revenues are from chewing gum sales worldwide
- *neither* of my kids got a single stick of Wrigley chewing gum for Halloween
- health care spending is on the order of $1.7 trillion (so off-the-cuff I'm guessing that dental care spending is in the range of tens of billions of dollars)


Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com