UNTYING THE DATA FROM THE KNOT

The Knot is the number one wedding network in the United States with over 11 million monthly visitors, and reaches 8 out of 10 brides. In 2022, the company surveyed 12,000 of its users to provide its annual wedding statistics. Among dozens of data points, that survey reported that couples in America spent an average of $5800 on engagement rings. As the wedding authority, this statistic from The Knot is cited by numerous media outlets, including Vogue and American Express. There's just one problem: that figure isn't true. That same year, Today's Wedding Jewelry Consumer, an independent market research firm dedicated to the wedding jewelry industry, released the actual purchasing data for engagement rings, and it was significantly less: $3670. The fact that The Knot's figure is so far off and gets cited far more often reveals a lot about us as a culture and the wedding industry as a business.

This month on our sister podcast, How Marketing Changed the World, we covered how DeBeers created the tradition of proposing with diamond engagement rings. Not only that, but they defined the cost of an engagement ring as three months of an individual's salary. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income for full-time workers in the United States in 2022 was about $57,000. Based on the DeBeers formula, which is repeated on The Knot and every other wedding outlet, the average cost of an engagement ring should have been $14,250. According to The Knot's own survey, average spending on engagement rings is closer to one month's salary. Actual spending turns out to be closer to one's wages for 24 days, 26% of the popularly publicized amount. So why would a survey by the country's largest wedding website result in such a skewed figure?

In 1950, researchers in Denver, Colorado conducted a unique experiment to compare the validity of responses to survey questions with actual data. They surveyed residents to find their participation in voting, charitable giving, and library card ownership, keeping in mind that they already had the exact figures for all of these things. The results were fascinating. All the survey results the researchers received were skewed more positively by an average of 19%. On average, one fifth of the participants lied about their behavior on a completely anonymous survey.

These results have been confirmed numerous times, and were summarized in Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's best-selling book, Everybody Lies. The author identifies three general reasons for this behavior when self reporting:

People answer what they wish were true for themselves
People answer what they believe should be the answer for the topic
People answer what they think the surveyor would like to hear

Sometimes respondents are influenced by multiples of these reasons; sometimes by all three. So the results of The Knot survey make perfect sense when considered alongside the prevailing notion of how much should be spent on an engagement ring, especially when that notion has been part of a consistent, 90-year marketing campaign. DeBeers has been so successful in creating the entire message around engagement rings that even when we don't spend the suggested amount on our rings, we somehow still believe that we did, or should. The same thing is true for every writer and reporter of the wedding industry. Everyone keeps repeating the same maxims, despite the fact that they aren't true. And they probably never were. In 1980, the average American household income was $21,000, and the average price for an engagement ring was $700. That's 20% of suggested two-month salary rule for that time.

It has been well documented that everything surrounding a wedding costs more than the same items for similarly sized functions, frequently referred to as the "wedding tax." While there are legitimate explanations for this phenomenon, it is also reasonable to think that some of these results, expectations, and behaviors are continually shaped and reinforced by the stories we keep telling ourselves based on the data we keep misinterpreting. The vast difference between The Knot's $5800 price and the actual $3670 price for an engagement ring in 2022 is not an isolated fact. Brides magazine (a wedding industry publication) cited the Natural Diamond Council (a wedding jewelry industry group) in reporting that the average cost of an engagement ring in 2022 was $7000. Clearly the idea of how much should be spent on these rings is influencing everyone involved, from potential buyers to industry leaders.

Data is an important tool, probably the most important tool we have in the 21st century, but we must always remember that people are reporting, collecting, and analyzing the data. And those people have biases, sometimes so deeply rooted in the cultural ethos that surrounds them, that they aren't even aware of them. The best data on any subject can be rendered meaningless with faulty execution and analysis. And for all of our best intentions, we as a species are not very reliable when it comes to answering basic questions about ourselves. One can't blame the surveyors, or the participants, or the media, or the industry for perpetuating a false idea. But for the first time in history, we have all the tools we need to rather easily confirm any data we encounter. In an age where we already have too much data, perhaps we would do well to focus on properly understanding what we have rather than continuously generating more noise and misunderstanding.

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UNTYING THE DATA FROM THE KNOT

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