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Halloween candy, supply, demand and SurveryMonkey: Getting it right next year

 

I don’t know how much of the Halloween sweet stuff you passed out to your neighborhood kids on Saturday.

But, well, at our house: We only had about 15 or so trick-or-treaters come a knocking. The costumes were great – including a girl holding up a tall brown piece of cardboard in front of herself.

I asked: Are you a giant chocolate bar?

Answer: No, I’m a telephone pole.

Her mom was holding a large piece of brown cardboard behind her. The two were tethered.

It might just be me and the fact that I’m forgetting things as the years go by and I long for the simple times when phones only had a simple bell ring.

But before each Halloween, I always think that more kids came knocking the year before.

The only problem with having about 15 kids show up on Oct. 31 was that, well, days earlier I went out and bought a 5.6-pound bag of assorted chocolate (about $14) wrapped in brightly-colored paper – orange, blue, yellow and brown.

Good stuff, I know.

Especially if you’re a kid. And yes, my son digs the sweet stuff so much that I had to leave it under a paper bag in our garage until Halloween arrived.

Keep in mind, though, that 5.6 pounds of Halloween candy equals 150 pieces.

Meaning: I have leftovers. Lots of leftovers.

I could have given each kid 10 pieces each and I’m sure their parents would have been really happy about that.

In terms of how much that plastic bag of chocolate weighs, note that some newborn babies are about 7 pounds or so.

My point – and it’s a basic one that I’m sure any economics instructor would point out – is that my supply of chocolate was far greater than demand from neighborhood kids.

Right?

There was no equilibrium. No sweet spot when inventory was cleared.

This sounds strange: In other words, I was unable to give out all the candy that I bought for Halloween.

What? Are kids only eating tofu these days?

So, next year, I’m going to turn to SurveyMonkey to do a pre-Halloween estimate of how many young people will swing by our house to pick up chocolate.

Yes, I know: Scientific, mathematic, economic!

I’m fairly confident that it will work. I might even be able to toss in a phrase like “margin of error” somewhere after I crunch my numbers.

SurveyMonkey looks like the right place to start.

First, the company boasts on its Web site that “knowledge is everything.”

The company also notes that it provides:

Intelligent survey software for primates of all species.  SurveyMonkey has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily.

Bingo. I like it.

I think my neighborhood kids – who certainly must be more Web and computer savvy than most people – will love it.

And if I can conduct a SurveyMonkey poll via text message, well, that would be terrific.

I suppose I could use evite. But SurveyMonkey is a catchier name.

I think the kids will love it!

The only catch that I can see right now for Halloween 2010: How will I be able to send the kids in the area an actual SurveyMonkey poll to answer?

Direct mail has always been a sure-fire winner to connect with people.

I could hire a public relations firm to do a micro, highly-focused phone campaign – based on our neighborhood Census tract – for me to reach out to all the young people who ride their bicycles or walk by the house.

I could go knocking door-to-door and ask each neighbor if I could send the poll by email.

But this option would actually require me to leave our house and talk with strangers face to face.

I don’t know if I want to do that.

Why can’t the kids just do a Google or bing search for my blog and reach me that way to take the poll?

Anyway, I’ll be counting the responses since I guess this blog post means that my Halloween 2010 survey for our neighborhood kids is officially underway.

Next year, I think I’ll drop by a regular supermarket for chocolate before I decide to buy at a big-box retail store.

That way, there’s a better probability that supply will meet demand.

My economic instructors, I know, would be so proud.

Markets would clear!