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Is the Funeral Industry Affected by Recession

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Submitted By brienoian
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How the funeral industry is being impacted and changed by the Global Recession? Benjamin Franklin’s old adage “in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes” has never been truer. However, if he was around today he might change his spelling of “death” to “debt”. Taxes in Ireland have increased recently and the forthcoming emergency budget looks certain to bring further misery to the population. So while governments are busy collecting whatever taxes they can, people are still dying! You are born and then you die, it is a simple fact of life. In fact the portion in between we call life is the uncertain part. When you die you will require the services of an undertaker / funeral director. They are there to tax you one final time and put the proverbial last nail in your coffin, with a bill attached! With the exception of a huge natural disaster, accident or war, the funeral industry can quite accurately predict its number of customers for the forthcoming year using the country’s population statistics and current death rates. With such detailed statistics to hand this has to be one of the easiest industries to forecast. Figure 1.1 shows the death rate falling in recent years as population increases. Each customer is new (although dead!) but new business can only be achieved by taking from a competitor and not by a sudden jump in demand for the product. Andrew Loos explains “You’re battling for current customers (of other funeral homes), many of them with deep traditions, so the battleground is new customers who’ve moved into your area and also disloyal customers from other funeral services” So recession or no recession the customers will keep coming. Recession proof? Well not really. For the purpose of this essay I will be referring to the Irish, UK and North American funeral industries. The industry is not often talked about. For some people it

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