【每日英文解析】情人节经济 Money Behind The Love

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收藏 2014-02-14

如下是今天的Daily English文章。今天是西方的情人节。奉上应景文章，《情人节经济学》

The Economics Of Valentine's Day: The Money Behind The Love
By: Bruce Kennedy, Benzinga Staff Writer
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Heart-sick romantic or hardened cynic, you cannot escape Valentine's Day.

The holiday not only has emotional importance for many people, it represents an important annual uptick（小幅增加） for the retail industry.

The National Retail Federation's latest annual Valentine's Day spending survey says total spending for the holday is expected to reach $17.3 billion this year.

And while consumers – still uneasy about the economic recovery – may not be as extravagant as they were in years past, they are still buying the traditional flowers, cards and sweets for their sweeties.

According to the NRF, the average person will shell out around $132 dollars this year on Valentine's Day candy, cards, gifts, dinner and more – up slightly from last year.

See also: 10 Things Most People Don't Know About The Debt Ceiling

“Valentine’s Day will continue to be a popular gift-giving event, even when consumers are frugal（节俭的，廉价的。与上文的extravagant相对应） with their budgets,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a press statement.“Consumers can expect Cupid’s holiday to resemble the promotional holiday（感觉说的是圣诞节前的大促销，在海外的童鞋欢迎指正） season we saw just a few months ago, as retailers recognize that their customers are still looking for the biggest bang for their buck.”

Some retailers have a lot banking on Valentine's Day. The holiday is hugely important to florists – with fresh flower purchases reportedly making up 36 percentof the holiday's transactions and 40 percent of overall holiday dollar volume.

Industry giant 1-800-Flowers Inc. (NASDAQ: FLWS) tells Benzinga the Valentine's holiday period – essentially, the first two weeks of February – represents about ten percent of their annual floral gift sales, and a smaller percentage of their gourmet food and gift baskets segment. The company's total operating revenues for fiscal 2013 came in at $735.5 million, up four percent from the previous year.

“Logistically, we work very closely with our BloomNet network of local florists weeks in advance of the Valentine holiday,” company vice president Joseph Pititto said in an email to Benzinga, “to provide volume forecasts and plan inventory buying and deployment to ensure smooth holiday operations.”

And Valentine's Day is no less important for North America's largest chocolate producer, The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY), which has a large international presence and revenues of more than billion.

Jeff Beckman with the company's PR department tells Benzinga that Hershey's “makes more than 8 million pounds of Kisses and sells more than...800 million individual Kisses for Valentine's Day.”

And if you think the Valentine's Day craving for（渴望、希望） chocolates is just an American obsession, think again（think again，常用于否定别人的惯性思维）.

The holiday has become big business for Japan's confectioners（confect做名词是糖果，动词是制造，此处confectioner是糖果/甜食/西点制造商）, reportedly making up more than half of their $5 billion in annual sales. Japanese tradition, spurred on（spur是刺激的意思，supr on是一时冲动，一时鞭策） by the nation's candy industry, calls for women to hand out chocolates to men on February 14 – with men returning the favor a month later, on “White Day.”（3月14日的节日，西方不过，起源于日本）

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lemonwp

2014-2-14 21:12:41

非常好，，以后跟着楼主学英语！

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此如过不

2014-2-15 11:04:28

一天一篇文章，不错

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ryuuzt

2014-2-15 11:14:32

Bang for the buck的Wiki解释：
Bang for the buck is an idiom meaning the worth of one's money or exertion. The phrase originated from the slang usage of the words "bang" which means "excitement" and "buck" which means "money".[1] Variations of the term include more bang for the buck and bigger bang for the buck. "More bang for the buck" was preceded by "more bounce for the ounce", an advertising slogan used in 1950 to market the carbonated soft drink Pepsi.

这里的用法我的理解是物有所值的意思。

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kx285

2014-2-15 20:49:50

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