Seasonal shopping: Halloween consumers are ready to pay to be scared

It is the season to get scary….

American author Seth Godin once claimed that "don't find customers for your product. Find products for your customers." Such a bold statement may be true for many businesses all year long and it may also fit the annual celebration of Halloween. In a world with endless products and services, customers are voting big-time in favor of the unusual "fear business". As the weeks leading to Oct. 31st indicate every year, sales of products related to the theme of "fear" are booming, maintaining a niche market for all things scary. Transactions of related products see a spike which also ends at that date, terming them under the headline of "seasonal sales". Such seasonal sales lead to seasonal customer feedback in which conversations and discussions of clients are surging accordingly around this time of year as well.

Inflatable vampire in a coffin? We've got it. An Oreo spooky graveyard kit? Make sure you don't miss it. And what about those Halloween thank you stickers? These are all products being offered to consumers around this time of year. Then there are the obvious costumes, toys, decorations, and other gifts.

Two more industries are pouring investing into their "fear products" throughout the year but sometimes place special advertising budgets just before Halloween. The gaming world markets horror video games for players who are interested. "Silent Hill" and "Resident Evil" are two of the leading best horror video games to play this year. Then there is the movie industry, where the fairly cheap-to-produce "Slasher movies" are usually earning profits for their production companies. The best slasher movies ever made list indicate that this "scare" theme is not a new trend, as films such as Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960's film Psycho rank high on it.

Such seasonal marketing and selling calls also for customer feedback's evaluation. Many suppliers witness "slow periods" such as the post-Christmas weeks vs. "big business periods" during a year, such as the November-December holiday season, and many retailers are seeing fluctuations in their revenues and profit streams accordingly. Customer feedback, always an important factor in the shelf-lives of any company's products also comes in "peaks", but serves as a key ingredient for manufacturers and sellers' considerations for those next-year "seasonal sales" periods.

Customers love to rank products, giving retailers some food for thought. For the television and film business, Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregation website, serves lists and charts which producers may use to analyze and plan ahead, such as the best 100 horror movies of all time or the 10 scariest horror movies of all time. For many retailers, websites such as Consumers Report are the place to explore for insights and feedback by customers.

Then there is also the ability to track, monitor, and analyze products and services directly via services such as Affogata, where such important customer feedback is being collected and analyzed around the clock and from many different online platforms. Spikes in customers' comments and conversations are expected around such seasonal selling periods, but it is always interesting to view just how much discussions did take place and how they are compared with previous years and also against one's competition. In addition, a thorough analysis of the customer content can highlight positive and negative areas, bringing companies to realize what worked for them and what didn't. This year's Halloween customer feedback can lead retailers to figure out how to improve on their products for next year's one day of a scare.