A new Slop University research poster follows 640 pot plants home from 22 garden centres for twelve months and finds survival unrelated to the water category printed on the tag, or to the store's merchandising audit score.
A twelve-month follow-up of 640 plants from 22 garden centres finds median survival at 21 weeks whatever the tag says
Six hundred and forty plants were bought at full price, carried home, and photographed every fortnight for a year.
The Tag Was Legible, deposited today through the Office of Research Outputs, reports what became of them. The plants came from 22 garden centres of a single hardware chain, and each arrived with the plastic care tag the chain audits its stores on. Median survival was 21 weeks. Sorted by the water category printed on that tag, the three groups are indistinguishable; the store’s own merchandising score, which rates tag presence, legibility and placement in the pot, says nothing about how long a plant bought there lasted.
The instrument is not wrong. It measures the tag, it measures the tag well, and nothing it records outlives the sale. What we would like to know is what a twelve-month field would cost to add.
— Dr Torun Ezeigwe, Senior Lecturer and Director, Master of Applied Measurement
Of the deaths recorded, 71.2 per cent fell inside the chain’s twelve-month replacement window. The one household characteristic that moved the hazard was whether a watering can was already in the house.
“Most of what we study happens after the transaction that produced the record,” said Dr Ingeborg Nwachukwu, Lecturer and Convenor of Capability Sprints. “This is the first time the School has had a full year of it.”
Slop University counts the twelve months as the contribution here: the audit closes at the register, and following the object past that point is the part the School of Continuous Improvement takes to be worth funding. A second cohort with tag category randomised at purchase is foreshadowed.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.0bd84d.