With a single greenhouse having anywhere from 500 to 5,000 different kinds of plants, the marketing and selling of the varied vegetation can be quite a task.
But this is the type of challenge that excites horticultural marketing professor Bridget Behe.
"What we want to do is provide businesses with very useful information about their consumers," she said of her work.
Studying consumers' attitudes, behaviors, thoughts and preferences on everything from sustainability to cut flowers, helps determine how certain types of plants should be marketed.
For instance, there's one color of flower that's always a high-seller.
"Red is still the predominantly-favored color, whether we're talking about geraniums or poinsettias, and it usually makes up about two-thirds to three quarters of the market," Behe said.
Behe said she enjoys this type of diverse research that benefits the horticulture industry.
"It really makes me feel good when we can do research here that’s very helpful to the industry because there aren’t very many other institutions doing this type of research."
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