Economics

News Article: "Massive response to sale prompts Build-A-Bear to shut down lines, offer vouchers"

Link: https://mru.io/build6362cLinks to an external site.

Description: Build-A-Bear announced an event where customers who show up to their stores can pay their current age for the popular stuffed animals. The stores experienced an overwhelming response to the reduction in price.

Assumptions: This resource assumes the students are familiar with the economics information up through the elasticity section as some questions are based off of information not included in the article.

Learning Objectives:

These questions intend to have students:

1. Comprehend a news article.
2. Translate unpredicted responses in price changes to elasticity of demand.

1. What best describes the Build-A-Bear sale structure?
2. Customers who waited in line were given 50% off their entire purchase.
3. b. Customers were able to pay their current age for a stuffed animal.
4. Customers were given a Build-A-Bear bag and were charged $20 for whatever they could fit in the bag.
5. Customers received the employee discount for an entire day.

2 Why did Build-A-Bear announce on their Facebook page that it was cutting off lines and no longer accepting more customers?

Questions connected to economics:

1. In a statement about the event, Build-A-Bear said, "Based on the information available to us before the day began, we could not have predicted this unprecedented reaction to our Pay Your Age Day event," calling the response to the sale "massive" and "overwhelming." According to this statement what can we say they got wrong in terms of the demand as it relates to elasticity.