Consumer Market Basket

By Greenhouse Grower staff|April 7, 2009

Introduction
When we look at retail prices amongst various retailers, we seem to focus on one or two items that don’t always represent the price for the whole shopping experience. An example is one retailer promoting a flagship item for a week, but a competitor offering its standard price.

Last week, we saw two retailers selling 4.5-inch annuals for 33 cents and three for a dollar while their competitors offered standard pricing.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) originated the “market basket” concept to track the prices of a fixed quantity of what originated from U.S. farms. Although all of the finished goods in the following market basket are from U.S. greenhouses, the inputs they use come from many countries around the globe.

The market basket we’re using consists of “green goods” and some hard goods with the item selection being very subjective from my observations during numerous retail visits. The Florida market basket consists of the following nine items.

Florida Market Basket Items
Item	Quantity	Comments
4.5-inch basic annuals	12	All seed grown.
Quart premium annuals	6	Vegetative and some high-value seed items.
Gallon geraniums	6	Sometimes sold as 6-inch depending on the retailer.
10-inch haning baskets basic	2	Seed grown items only.
10-inch hanging baskets premium	2	Vegetative and some high-value seed items (i.e. Wave petunia).
4-inch vegetables	6
Perennials	6	Basic perennials not branded
1/3-pound fertilizer slow release	1
3-2 cubic foot bags of potting mix	3

We will slightly change the goods in other regions because of the retailer’s product mix. As you move further north, packs replace 4.5-inch annuals as the flagship SKU, but we’ll attempt to keep as much continuity as possible in the future.