Love Has Got a Price Tag

It’s noteworthy what the celebration of Valentine’s Day (not the celebration of love) has turned out to be in Nigeria over the past decade. Interestingly, Valentine’s Day is the next most celebrated ‘festival’ on the lunar calendar after New Year.

Here, Valentine is synonymous with love and splashes of Red will be seen in the even smallest of places this season. Without trying to differentiate what Love is from what Valentine means, or discussing the true essence of Valentine, our minds are still echoing with memories of Friday, the 14^th: marriage proposals, break ups and heart breaks, high purchasing power (thank goodness that Valentine isn’t in January, the month people are broke after all yuletide expenses), dinner dates, deceit, traffic jam in major cities et al!

This is the month of LOVE!  This post (and maybe the next) is dedicated to this month of love, the celebration of what love is and what price people pay for love.

Whilst listening to Tina Turner’s classic, ‘what’s love got to do with it’ one night a few weeks ago and the subsequent ‘media celebration’ of Valentine, I began to think about how much Naira will ‘change hands’ this valentine. So my search began, and below is an insight into how much ‘love’ cost in the US and UK…

• In 2009, $14.7 billion was estimated as the amount spent on valentine gifts in the U.S.
• In 2013, an estimated £ 978 million  was spent on valentine gifts and getaways in the U.K
• This year, it is projected that between $17b and $20b is expected to be spent on valentine gifts. (Actual figures not yet revealed as Valentine isn’t really over

As expected, it was also revealed that men spend more than women on valentine gifts while some people even actually purchase gifts for their pets ( a practical example of the cliché, human being never sleep, dog dey snore!)

Incidentally, we have known our dear country not to have statistics for almost anything and everything. You may ask, why do we need such statistics? Such information will give us an insight into how much purchasing power the citizens have, consumer behaviour per season vis-a-vis how much is expended every season, help economists determine Consumer Price Index and help marketing professionals make adequate forecasts on revenue generation which will positively impact budget planning, monitoring and control.

Amazingly, we should become conscious of how much a simple activity or festival can affect so many other things in our nation. A practical example is banks tracking withdrawals from ATM machines and the volume of transactions made via POS terminals and other online solutions this season. These will positively affect operations planning, resource and marketing management to mention a few.

Apart from these, most of these gifts are not produced in Nigeria: does our Government care to know how these importations affect exchange rates, how much is generated in excise duties by the Nigerian Customs this season (or prior) amongst other things. My humble submission is that we need to find means to generate and manage statistics for value creation.

While businesses are still counting their gains, smiling to the banks and looking forward to ‘another season of opportunity’, let us love for the right reasons… to create and deliver value, to embrace one another in unity irrespective of tribe or religion, for growth and stability.

Still in the spirit of love (or rather Valentine), my next post is something both of interest and immense value.

Happy Valentine! Enjoy the season and more importantly, make the best of it.

With love,

tilloppss

Twitter: @tilloppss