As the festive season approaches, advent calendars begin to appear on the aisles of retail stores, ranging from traditional calendars filled with chocolate or sweets to luxurious calendars containing premium cosmetics or perfumes. Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft, Chair of Marketing Management (IfM), gave Radio WAF listeners a marketing perspective on advent calendars and discussed current trends shaping the development of these products.

Why are advent calendars becoming more expensive and diverse?

According to Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft, advent calendars carry a symbolic value as gifts. Consequently, givers of advent calendars are often prepared to spend more to enhance the personal relevance of the gift. This ensures that the contents of the calendar are tailored to the specific preferences of the recipient, which in turn leads to a wider variety of calendars and an increased willingness to pay.

Which kinds of benefits do advent calendars provide to the firms that sell them? Are they even profitable?

Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft emphasizes that the potential benefits of selling a product as part of an advent calendar vary between products. In the case of spices for example, advent calendars could have a negative effect on sales, because they create excess capacities for households, potentially leading to a reduction in demand in the months following Christmas time. On the other hand, filling advent calendars with probes of products, for example in the case of cosmetics, could lead to an increase in demand, because customers get into contact with products they may have not been aware of previously.

How do advent calendars that contain coupons affect consumer behavior and how can they be used as a marketing tool?

Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft describes that consumers that own advent calendars that contain vouchers experience a doubled benefit, by first opening the calendar and encountering the voucher and then using it to buy the desired product for less. Businesses benefit from these calendars by encouraging customers to visit their stores and use their vouchers, potentially purchasing other goods in addition to those covered by the voucher.

Lastly, is the value of the goods in advent calendars usually equivalent to the price or are consumers receiving less value than they paid for, when purchasing advent calendars?

The value of the contents varies from calendar to calendar, but Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft points out that although there are cases where calendars are filled with obsolete products or products whose value does not match the price of the calendar, advent calendars tend to offer a value that is beneficial to both the company selling the calendar and the consumer buying it.