Are we asking the right question?

April 28, 2026/Business, Cemetery, Cremation/

Over my years as an active funeral director I would be called to the place of death and eventually ask the family before I left, “Are you thinking about burial or cremation?” If you’re not a funeral director it is a question that needs an answer because how the funeral director would take care of the deceased once back at the funeral home would be dependent on that answer.

As funeral service has moved forward, especially with the continued growth of cremation, I wonder if that is the wrong question in today’s world. Not only for the funeral director, but for the family as well.

You see, families cannot possibly know all of the options that are available for memorialization of a loved one today. And, what they don’t know might cause them to make a decision that they may regret later. . . . If you were the funeral director that didn’t let them know of the options available — they might believe that you didn’t prepare them properly to make the necessary arrangements . . . . .and didn’t care enough about them to go through the options with them.

Tom Ryan, CEO of Service Corporation International (SCI) made these comments in his February 2026 Earnings call that relates to that supposition, “We actually have piloted in a few markets now in the process of rolling out to more a specific focus on that cremation consumer. And some of that is putting videos into our locations that can show the opportunities to the cremation customer and just making it more visible to our visitors and to the clients that we’re serving.”

That quote was not an isolated incident as Ryan made this similar comment in his 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Call three months prior, “We have a lot of products that I’d tell you consumers really don’t have familiarity with. I think a lot of cremation consumers come in and don’t really understand what we have available. So we’re really focused this year with some consumer research that we’ve done about trying to tie that consumer in a better way to educate them about what we have.

Because we found in the focus groups that almost zero out of 10 knew what we had. And about 8 out of 10, once they saw it, said, I’m interested in looking. Doesn’t mean they’re going to buy, but I think there’s a consumer there that we probably have not done as good a job with as we’ve done with the burial consumer.”

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: Here’s my point — when we ask that “Burial or Cremation” question we ask a question that has an either/or answer to it. If the deceased’s family says “Burial” virtually everyone, even in this day of more and more options, proceeds with the closed mindset that we are having a casket, visitation, service, and burial. And, if the family says “Cremation” everybody proceeds with the idea of a simple or direct cremation — that may or may not have a service.

What about if we would ask an “open ended” question such as “How do you plan to permanently memorialize your loved one?” Consumers may not easily understand the term “memorialization” but that opens up the ability for the funeral director to talk about all kinds of options. And, some of those options — such as green burials, burial of cremated remains with monuments, cremated remains orbiting earth (don’t write this idea off as the new Artemis space program is bringing new interest back to this solution), keepsake solidified remains such as Parting Stone, cremation jewelry, niches, and on and on.

Those are options that most cremation consumers have not even thought about — and you are not only doing them a favor by mentioning their availability — but you may be doing yourself a favor by bringing about more revenue, much in the form of commissions that can be like a margin on a casket sale from the third parties, to the funeral home for a case that might have simply been a direct cremation with no service.

I’ve often thought that in the past it has been the “disposition method” (burial/cremation) that drove the “memorialization” process when that was simply earth burial or cremated remains in an urn. In today’s world I sometimes think the choice of the “memorialization” (what is planned to be done with the remains – full body or cremation) many times leads to the solution of how the “disposition method” will be chosen.

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