PLEASE LOOK** Analysis of snake sales

Good point, but without any verifiable data it could easily go the other way, too. What's to stop people from saying they purchased an '11 Spider for $1,500 just to bump up the average, or others from saying they bought a Spider for $20 in the hopes that people will lower their prices?

I think it's a good idea in that everyone wants to price their snakes according to market and buyers want to get a good deal, but I just don't see this project getting off the ground.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

It might be easier to get numbers by asking what people PAID for hatchlings, without disclosing who they bought from. Without revealing any of the actual data to the public, that should be impersonal enough.

But your date would be skewed by people who get great deals from friends.

---

A GREAT idea in theory, but as others have said, isn't going to happen. What you see advertised often isn't what is paid. Or lots of times people work out package deals on multiple animals, etc.

I guess I'm not surprised by the responses.... I definitely figured getting people on board with this idea would be the biggest challenge.

I don't think some of you fully understand what I was setting out to do. I'm not just looking to find average prices as that seems to be the general concern voiced in the previous posts. I was more looking to find things a bit deeper which would allow some sort of forecasting for future prices. You could easily find where prices depreciate quickest and stall longest. You could also easily tell which price points have the highest demand which could also tell you which morphs have the shortest turnaround. You can find any type of trendline you are looking for as long as your have a complete data set. If you treat this as a business and do some basic analysis on a significant industry level, you can easily create a primitive benchmark.

To the individual stating that elasticity is far too great to complete this type of project-- I disagree. I think you're drastically overstating the elasticity of demand of ball pythons. Yes there are going to be huge fluctuations in price in your upper echelon morphs, but that's a much smaller market than your sub $1500 snakes, or sub $500 snakes for that matter! Prices will change, people will sell snakes under the table for far less than what they say, but that's what a good analyst figures out. Cutting the garbage data from the good data is a necessity in any analysis.
And to the person saying that no business gives data out on their previous perfomance (which is exactly what I was asking for), EVERY publicly traded company gives EVERY aspect of their sales numbers out.

Please don't get offended by me thinking most comments have been wrong, it's just my opinion. Analysis is my profession. I'm a senior analyst of one of the top three most powerful financial institutions on this blue planet. I'm not bragging-- simply stating that don't tell me what I envision is not possible. I wouldn't tell an architect that he can't design a particular building style. I truly believe an in-depth analysis would be an easy, however time consuming, project to complete and show some very cool trends.

No worries though. Like I said, I figured actually getting the data would be the hardest part of this process.

I would suggest setting up a private SOMETHING (forum, website, form, etc) where people can anonymously send in the numbers without disclosing what breeder they are.

I think I learned you are more likely to get people to participate if it's anonymous, but then you have to account for the "fake" numbers you may get due to it being anonymous.

I've just slightly touched on Analysis in my schooling.

But I think you are MUCH more likely to get participation if you are able to create something to make responses anonymous and make it so the user doesn't have to go out of their way to give you the data (IE make a new email address to be anonymous).

I think a website with a form is probably a good idea. That way, no registration, no making a new email address, they just go to your link, fill out the form, and send.

Or make a survey with questions like "what was your approx number of sales this year" and list a few ranges, same for price, etc. It won't be as accurate, but again, you will get SOME level of support rather than none.

Anyway, just my 2c :)

I think its a pretty neat idea and I would participate if I had bred any ball-pythons yet. I do agree with reptilegirl....if it were anonymous you may get some level of participation.