Reader Brandon Fuller sends this picture of a blue-ribbon shortage. Fuller wonders if “a significant share of hosts only deem first place finishers to be worthy of recognition in party games.” Olympic silver medalists are often disappointed by their performance – does the same hold true for second-place finishers at children’s birthday parties?
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First? who cares. Get it? r r
But I believe this. My son’s class all got made up rewards.
Obviously the blue ribbons are mis-priced. They should charge more.
#2 is correct – blue ribbons are worth more, so charge more!
Perhaps parents are planning to call it a tie, making everyone a 1st place winner (which lowers the value of such an honor)?
Surely only large parties justify the cost of purchasing multiple placement ribbons?
If we want to answer your question, we need to know the mean size of children’s parties. Apply a small correction for the child(ren) who prefer not to participate in party games. Create a scaling model of other discrete party goods that correspond to party size and do not entail competition (e.g. balloons, streamers). Compare the photo (mean sales) with the model (at the mean party size), looking for any discrepencies.
For better analysis, surveys of party good sales vs. party sizes should be done, comparing ribbon sales of each placement against general sales and calculating scaling coefficients (perhaps over certain size ranges).
Of course, the relative popularity of ribbons will need to be taken into account in the first, rough, analysis.
@ Michael Giberson
Excellent point; also, the 2nd and 3rd place ribbons may be overpriced.
It seems like a rater obvious point, but presumably the store orders a larger quantity of first place ribbons. Or that could be the problem. It’s just like department stores ordering shirts for sale, where you have, say, a few small, many medium and a mostly large. You stock what sells. No surprise that third place is not very popular.
I thought the tendency these days was to provide every participant some sort of award, and to avoid the ranking and ‘emotionally damaging’ situations that could come from calling one child better than another. I would be curious to see that store’s stock of more generic participation awards.
Assuming that @Shayna is not correct, and that not everyone will receive a 1st place ribbon, I take this as a positive sign; there are at least some people in our society willing to say that in a competition, finishing first matters.