Influencing Consumer Perceptions and Purchases of Christmas Trees and Poinsettias through a State-wide Marketing Campaign

Christmas tree and poinsettia sales are static or declining nationally and in Michigan, in terms of number of producers, number of units produced, area in production, and overall profitability.  To reverse this trend, an educational media campaign (“Make it a Real Michigan Christmas”) was in operation from 1 November to 25 December 2011 to encourage Michigan residents to buy live Christmas trees and Poinsettias.  The campaign goals were to preserve or increase sales and people employed in plant production with three key messages:  buying real products helps preserve or build Christmas traditions while being an economically, emotionally, and ecologically beneficial choice.  To partly assess the effectiveness of the campaign, a pre- (27 November 2011 through 29 November 2011) and post- (17 January 2012 through 20 January 2012) online consumer surveys were conducted.  The surveys queried participants past year purchases of Christmas trees and poinsettias, asked attitudinal questions about the benefits of real versus artificial foliage, and had participants rank their favorite and least favorite poinsettias (pictures) by color (traditional red, pink, multicolored, blue, and white).  A total of 999 respondents (508 in 2011 and 491 in 2012) participated with a mean age of 60.3 years, of which 66% and 33% were female and male, respectively.  Almost half of respondents had a self reported income of $20,000–$59,999 per year.  Roughly 30% of participants purchased Christmas trees (real or artificial) and at least one poinsettia for both survey years.  Of the purchased Christmas trees, over half (62.5% and 61.1% in the 2011 and 2012 survey, respectively) were live trees.  The Number of purchased poinsettias and Christmas trees did not differ between survey years, which may be due to the low awareness of the campaign (4.1%).  However, post-participants did more strongly agree with the statement that purchasing a real Christmas tree or poinsettia supports Michigan businesses and farmers than pre-participants.  Red poinsettias are still purchased more often than other colors and fewer poinsettias in general were purchased from mass merchants in 2011 than 2010.  Participants with higher incomes purchased more poinsettias and live Christmas trees than participants from lower income brackets. Higher income participants favored traditional red poinsettias more than lower income participants and higher income participants disliked blue poinsettias more than lower income participants.