MARKETING CHRISTMAS TREES - Auburn University Repository

MARKETING
CHRISTMAS TREES
In R rvtzc RY1
B. F. ALVORD, Statistician'
THE CHRISTMAS TREE market of the United States is expanding.
Total U.S. production and imports was reported to be approximately
28 million trees in 1947 (7) and 38 million trees in 1955
(8), an increase of about 34 per cent. Increase in population during
this period was from 144 to 165 million people, or about 15
per cent. Consequently, Christmas tree production and imports
per capita increased about 15 per cent.
Production plus imports are not the same as sales. However, in
the Nation as a whole, the proportion sold may be expected to be
sufficiently constant from year to year for changes in productionimports
data to also represent changes in marketing.
Now that electricity is almost universally available to homes
and permits reasonably safe Christmas tree lighting, it would seem
that the upward trend in use would at least keep pace with population
increases. Changes in general economic conditions would,
of course, cause fluctuations.
Imports, largely from Canada, accounted for about a fourth of
the total Christmas trees offered for sale in 1947 and about a third
in 1955. Thus, imports from outside the United States increased
by more than 50 per cent and outstripped both domestic production
and population increases.
Eastern red cedar, the South's most important contribution to
the Christmas tree trade, represented about 10 per cent of domes-
This project was supported by Hatch and State research funds and carried
out as Alabama Project 567.
2 The author is indebted to Robert Glover and Wayne Granberry for conducting
interviews, to many persons of the Christmas tree trade for providing information
upon which this study is based, and to G. I. Garin of the Forestry Department
and to the staff of the Agricultural Economics Department for helpful suggestions.