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I is
for Ice Cream. Now you may well ask’ “What has ice cream
got to do with the weather?” Well the answer is quite a lot.
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Anticipating
the demand for products in supermarkets has become much more
sophisticated than stocking more salads in hot weather.
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| Richard
Angwin |
Sales
of ice cream are very closely linked to temperatures and sunshine.
The warmer the weather the more we tend to buy.
So
if organisations such as the Met Office can predict the trends in
temperatures over the following few weeks or months, then ice cream
manufacturers can anticipate the likely demand for their products
and increase or decrease production accordingly.
Ice
cream is a fairly obvious example - but it is not always so simple.
Take fizzy drinks for example. As the temperature rises the demand
for these drinks increases. But above about 23 or 24 degrees Celsius
people turn away from these drinks and instead they look to bottled
water to quench their thirst.
Anticipating
the demand for products in supermarkets has become much more sophisticated
than stocking more salads in hot weather.
Predicting
supermaket sales
Most
cat owners for example will tell you that their ‘moggies’
eat less food in warm weather. So rather than tell the petfood manufacturers
what the weather is going to be, we can now tell them when there
will be a demand for catfood.
This
link between weather and maunfacturing can be a highly profitable
one, but it doesn’t work all the time.
Grass
grows faster in warmer weather, so you might think that the demand
for lawnmowers would increase. But that’s not the case. After
a winter in a damp garden shed most of us either buy a new mower
at the start of the season when the old one doesn’t work, or
- like me - they soldier on with old one.
by
Richard Angwin
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