Takes

Mark Dolliver WHAT, ME WORRY? :If Only One Could Buy Shares in the Wealth Effect We must be such a disappointment to Alan Greenspan. He keeps taking sensible steps to keep the economy from spinning out of control; we keep spending like drunken sailors--even when the stock market drops hundreds of points at a time. A Los Angeles Times poll suggests the "wealth effect" has developed a resilience that sustains its influence even when paper profits are going up in smoke. Ninety-one percent of the poll's stock-owning respondents said "they have no plans to cancel or postpone spending plans because of the stock market's fluctuations." It's not as if they feel stock prices have found a firm footing. In fact, 58 percent believe "some sort of shake-up" is "yet to come." But they aren't cashing out and streaming toward the exits: 79 percent said there's "nothing" that could push them out of the market. Tellingly, a rising market seems to exert more influence on stock owners' sense of financial well-being than a falling market. Thus, 34 percent said they feel "more financially secure" when their investments are doing better, while just 23 percent said they feel "more insecure" when those investments are doing worse. On the other hand, there is a near symmetry in the way rising and falling markets affect people's stated attitudes toward spending. Fifteen percent said they feel they have "more money to spend" when their shares are doing well; 14 percent feel they have "less money to spend" when their shares are sliding. This assumes, of course, that they know how their shares are faring. Many of them don't. Sure, some people stare at the stock ticker all day, but 41 percent of the survey's stock owners said they don't follow the market closely. MOTHERS RULE: Our More-Popular Parents Want a warm, parental presence in your next commercial? Unless all the mothers are booked up that day, a father would be a poor second choice. As you can see in the chart below, which summarizes the findings of a new Gallup poll, fathers are more than twice as likely as mothers to provoke negative feelings on the part of their kids. And mothers are more likely than fathers to inspire strongly positive sentiments. Fans of Oedipus may be surprised by one gender gap in the findings: Sons are more indulgent than daughters toward their fathers. Eighty-one percent of the survey's male respondents said their fathers were a positive influence; 73 percent of female respondents said the same. And while 9 percent of men described their fathers' influence as negative, 16 percent of women did so. When it comes to mothers, daughters were significantly more likely than sons to harbor negative feelings, by a margin of 7 percent to 3 percent. MAIL AND FEMALE: Time to Corner the Market For Electronic Stationery Do you have the impression people are saying more frank and/or unpleasant things to relatives and friends? Blame e-mail. In polling for the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 31 percent of respondents who exchange e-mail with family members said it's "easier to say frank or unpleasant things in e-mail than in conversation." Among those who exchange e-mail with "significant friends," 34 percent said the same thing. Perhaps this helps explain why (as the chart shows) so many online Americans would sorely miss e-mail if it weren't available. Online women were more likely than online men to say they'd miss e-mail "a lot" (56 percent versus 43 percent). That's in line with the survey's findings that women are more apt than men to feel e-mail keeps them connected to near and dear ones. For instance, 60 percent of online women (versus 51 percent of men) said it "has improved their connections to family members"; 71 percent of online women (versus 61 percent of men) said e-mail has improved connections to close friends. Seventy-eight percent of the women look forward to checking their e-mail, versus 62 percent of the men. Men and women alike find lots of "spam" when they do so, and 37 percent of onliners said unwanted messages are a "problem." That figure rises to 41 percent among those who have been online for a year or more. Will these people welcome the predicted rise of e-mail as a major marketing vehicle? Among other findings from the survey is this "unexpected" one: "Women are slightly more likely than men to play games online," by a margin of 37 percent to 32 percent. "On a typical day, 6 percent of online women and 5 percent of online men play a game on the Web." Moving from the profane to the sacred, the survey found women more likely than men (23 percent versus 19 percent) to use the Internet to seek religious/spiritual information. VERY MERRY: Nothing Like Gift Giving To Make a Holiday Popular No wonder people are willing to see the Christmas-shopping season begin shortly after Labor Day. In an open-ended Zogby America poll, respondents were asked to pick their "most enjoyable holiday of the year," and Christmas won more mentions (60 percent) than the rest of the calendar combined. Thanksgiving was the runner-up, picked by 13 percent of respondents. No other holiday scored in double digits, and only July 4th and Easter pulled 5 percent or above. Despite its transformation into a holiday for all ages, Halloween was tops with just 3 percent of respondents. New Year's Day was the choice of 1 percent, which is more than New Year's Eve could manage. A grumpy 2 percent didn't find any holiday very enjoyable; an easy-to-please 1 percent picked "all" of them. One odd gender gap: Men were more than twice as likely as women to pick July 4th as their favorite (10 percent versus 4 percent). RETIRING TYPES: Forget the Gold Watch; Quitting Is its Own Reward Whatever worries Americans have as they near retirement, missing the joys of their jobs isn't one of them. In a Roper Starch poll conducted for Delaware Investments, 87 percent of recent retirees said they are "ecstatic" about not working at their old jobs. Among "pre-retirees"--people who are within five years of retiring--75 percent expect to be ecstatic about leaving their jobs behind. Do people feel this way because the lure of sheer idleness is so strong? Not to judge by another of the poll's findings: Of the pre-retirees surveyed, 42 percent expect to work for pay even after they've retired. Indeed, the study's analysis suggests people may be unwisely counting on the income from such work, since just 21 percent of recent retirees actually work for pay. Work would tie them down, and92 percent of pre-retirees expect to travel once they've retired. All in all, 94 percent of pre-retirees and 91 percent of recent retirees said they were "pretty well set" for retirement and had "planned well for it." BE A SPORT: What Price Victory? Too Much for Most Fans Take me out to the ballgame? Only if you're buying the tickets. A survey commissioned by Sports Illustrated finds the soaring cost of attending games is estranging people from pro sports. As the chart indicates, the "total cost" is the main factor keeping fans away. With ticket prices having risen four times faster than the Consumer Price Index since 1991, "attending sports events went from being affordable family entertainment to being a corporate perk." Meanwhile, seats sold to those corporate customers often go empty. "Unless it's a playoff game or a particularly compelling regular-season matchup," notes SI, "season-ticket holders increasingly just aren't bothering to come." Still, plenty of fans would attend more games if it weren't so pricey. With all due respect to big-screen TVs, 66 percent would like to see a baseball game live, versus 24 percent preferring to watch on the tube. For NBA games, the split was 48 percent "in person" versus 36 percent "on TV"; for hockey, 46 percent "in person" versus 23 percent "on TV." Only for NFL football did "on TV" (48 percent) tally more votes than "in person" (46 percent). MIXED BLESSINGS: A High-Decibel Market, Ford's Open Secret, Etc. In case you weren't keeping count, a study by ACNielsen finds you're making fewer trips to the grocery store. At least, the typical consumer is doing so. Last year, the number of grocery-store jaunts per household slipped to 90, from 91 the year before and 94 in 1997. Drug and convenience/gas outlets are taking up some of the slack, as each had a rise in "basket ring"--i.e., the amount a person spends per trip. You can't go wrong in our anti-authoritarian society by bad-mouthing umpires, referees et al. So, an ad for Dehen Outfitters, which markets cheerleader uniforms, adds ref-deafening to cheerers' job description. This will appeal to the target audience, which prefers to see its role as participatory rather than decorative. Big Ads of Portland, Ore., created the piece. You might think a multimillion-dollar windfall would bring out a person's impulsive side. Not so, judging by a recent MSNBC online poll. Asked to cite "the first thing you would do if you won the Big Game jackpot," a plurality (47 percent) responded, "Put it all in the bank and wait a few weeks before deciding what to do." What a bunch of chickens! Just 25 percent of respondents said they would promptly quit their jobs. Roam around cyberspace and there's no telling where you might end up. A campaign for bikestore.com makes that point, depicting some Web addresses that might offer tips about bicycling--or might not. One ad features a female cyclist who has given www.trekkingfrance.com a try, only to find herself in the company of a Trekkie in a beret. Actually, when you type in any of the campaign's fanciful addresses (like the www.trailbuddies.com in the ad shown above), it routes you to the bikestore.com site. TDA Advertising & Design of Boulder, Colo., created the cautionary campaign. Granted, it was out of the ordinary to see a company denouncing its own products for the harm they cause. But was Ford running any risk last week by acknowledging that sport-utility vehicles are worse than cars when it comes to burning gas, emitting pollution and obliterating those with whom they collide? It's not as if those factors were other than common knowledge. The fact that Ford has conceded it knows what we knew it knew is unlikely to deter people from buying its SUVs. Churches grant you absolution only when you promise not to persist in a sin to which you've confessed. Consumers are, in this instance, less strict. After all, it has been clear for years that numerous people are perfectly willing to guzzle gas, pollute the air and mow down cars that get in their way.

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