Fireworks – Now there’s a seasonal business, but…

Fireworks are a seasonal business all over the world. But did you know when it peaks in different countries?  I didn’t know this or think about it. But you might ask your students if they know when fireworks are most popular in the U.K., Hong Kong, Japan, and other countries. Assuming your students are American, they will of course know that sales here peak just before the Fourth of July with a small bump before New Year’s Eve. This Datawrapper blog post “When do people watch fireworks around the world?”  will answer those questions for you. The article does not quote sales data but uses data from Google Trends, which shows search frequency for key terms. In this case, Google Trends offers a reasonable proxy for sales data.

This article might give you the opportunity to explore how Google Trends could be used by marketing managers to project sales or demand for new products. This could be added to your coverage of marketing research (Chapter 7) or search and owned media (Chapters 13 and 16). Students might be directed to Google Trends and asked to enter some key terms. This could be used to stimulate discussion about how marketing managers could use this data (new product development, forecasting, competitor analysis, and…).