Market Size of UK card greeting market?

Question

Hello,

I have an interview with occ and one of their previous market size questions was the size of the UK greeting market. i have run through many different variations of how i would answer this, but am not content with any.

Could somene help me do this?

So I can compare, lets assume the following:

UK population: 64 million

Average life span: 80 (800k people per age group)

greeting cards include xmas, brithdays, mothers/farthers day, work thank yous etc...

Answer 1

Hey fjrifr,

I think your approach is somehow going into the right direction.

Now that you've divided the population by age groups you just need to factor in the % of each segment that still sends cards, as well as the number of cards that each of them send per year (taking into consideration the several types of cards) >> this should give you the market size for personal cards
Besides, you need to add the cards that are sent on a professional basis (e.g., when someone has a child at work, etc)
If you want the market size in value terms, you just need to multiple by an weighted average price

Best

Bruno

Answer 2

Hi there,

To answer this question you need to have few dimensions:

* How many people send greeting cards?

* How many times average sender do so per year?

* What is the average price per card? How many of them are official (original) or shady? How many of them are produced from an internal sources (e.g. by individuals for individuals)?

Additionally, to make you shining, I would also consider:

* Market dynamic (whether this year people sent less cards than in previous years)?

* Cycling - whether there are any market cycles (yes, there are few) :)

* Market interdependencies - which cards segments exist (e.g. cards for a movie, Christmas cards, etc.)