What is a greeting card and why do people buy them?

Basically a greetings card is a way to communicate a sentiment.

There is varying levels of sentiment to be catered for and varied different relationships to be taken into consideration and also many types of occasions to be covered from general birthday cards to the strange and sublime.

People like to send greeting cards for all sorts of reason depending on the occasion and the relationship they have with each person in their life so clearly the scope for greeting cards is massive.

To fully understand why people send greeting cards one must think of ones own needs and apply it to ones own relationships, only then can you clearly see how different and diverse peoples needs or wants can be.

An example from my own family

My nana whom is sadly not with us anymore, at eighteen years of age she was an avid swimmer, this led her into a career working in a circus where she would climb onto a platform high up in the circus tent and dive into a small pool of water wearing what we now know to be a Speedo swimsuit, in those times wearing a swimsuit was actually more daring than her high diving act.
In her senior years she would recall those days fondly to anyone that was listening and I as a small child heard the story many times and was never sorry to hear it again.

So of course when it was her birthday or Christmas I used to look for something to do with the circus or with a picture of someone wearing a swimsuit in refection of times gone by, I'd also look for something that said ” To my Nana “ which of course I could never find and would generally settle for something like “ To my Grandmother “ which she didn’t like, then lastly to add insult to injury I would be looking for words inside that were amusing and not slushy, which was quite impossible as anything that said “ To my Grandmother “ on the front the card would generally ramble on inside about devotion and love, baking cakes or wearing slippers and was never really what I wanted.

I just thought I’d point this out as this is how peoples brains work when they are looking for a greetings card - of course my story is extreme but not that extreme people are always convinced that it is possible to get exactly what they want from the local shop and are often astonished when they find they can’t.

For myself I realised that if I found a picture on the front I liked I could write
whatever I wanted inside.

So for the sake of the masses most greeting cards are themed around popular occasions, birthday, anniversary, baby boy and baby girl cards, the list is endless but of course most publishers will research what occasions they will sell the most of and concentrate on those.

What people do spend a massive amount of time doing is reading the words inside greetings cards in an attempt to find something they are happy is relevant to what they want to say, and something that they feel the person receiving the card will like, maybe funny or be touched by the message.

People look for a greeting card that is relevant to the occasion. e.g. Birthday card

Next they look at the front of the card for relevance e.g. Birthday cakes, balloons etc.

Lastly they look inside to see what the words say, and here lies the real reason why people buy greetings cards, the message inside will determine whether the card gets purchased or stuffed back into the rack, a greetings card is purchased for the sole reason of 'to express an emotion of the buyer of the card to the receiver of the greetings card' whether that emotion is realised by either of the individuals or not is another subject!

Once chosen they may look at the price, however this is no longer an issue, the purchase from this point on is purely emotionally driven, it will not be until sometime later that they will moan to whoever will listen about how much it has cost them!

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