Constrained Bliss Point

As a loyal reader of Marginal Revolution, I enjoy Tyler and Alex’s “Markets in Everything” segment, where they point out all the cool and unexpected markets that spring up in every sort of circumstance. For example, markets in souls? Awesome.

But there aren’t really markets in everything. Sometimes there are market voids, or specific needs and wants consumers demand that markets don’t provide. Sensing a market void, I think I’ll attempt to elucidate these market voids as I see them.

Earlier this week I was in my local CVS looking for a birthday card for my step-mom. I found my way to the card aisle, more specifically the birthday card aisle (since there are a few card aisles), past the section of birthday cards for “someone special”, into the birthday-cards-for-females section. There was about half a row of cards just for all the ladies you could have in your life: moms, grandmas, daughters, cousins and aunts, mothers-in-law — but none for step-mothers.

Maybe step-mom birthday cards were there but I just couldn’t find them. Or maybe not enough step-sons go out to buy birthday cards. Perhaps the step-mom birthday cards were not in the section with the rest of the female family member birthday cards? It could be an oversight on my part, but I did scan that aisle at least twice.

I wound up going with a “someone special” card, in case you were wondering.

Tags: Alex Tabarrok, birthday cards, marginal revolution, market void, markets, markets in everything, step-mom, step-mother, Tyler Cowen

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 12:38 am and is filed under Economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.