Consumer Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day: Historical Trends and 2024 Market Projection
“Consumer Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day:
Historical Trends and 2024 Market Projection Objectives.
“The Bloom Show” presentation laid out five major objectives: 1) Gain an understanding of historical consumer floral purchasing trends for the Valentine’s Day holiday, 2) Know how Valentine’s Day floral purchasing trends vary by key consumer demographics and product usage (e.g. consumer age and floral spending levels), 3) Know the importance of Valentine’s Day in helping to build the floral market overall by examining consumer Valentine’s Day floral purchasing correlations with other floral occasions, 4) With P&P’s historical consumer household floral purchasing trend data and U.S. Census data, make a floral market projection for Valentine’s Day 2024, and 5) Overall, discuss the implications of the consumer floral-market trends on marketing and business strategies for a more successful Valentine’s Day.
Research Framework.
Consumer floral purchasing data for Valentine’s Day was obtained from four P&P nationwide surveys of floral-buying households (The P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey) for the years 2000, 2007, 2013, & 2019 (Prince & Prince, 2020). P&P defines “floral” as fresh cut flowers (fresh arrangements, bouquets, single stems/ /bunches, and corsages), and indoor potted flowering plants, and indoor potted foliage plants & planters. Each survey comprised a random selection of over 1,000 floral-buying household respondents throughout the U.S., providing a +/- 3% sampling error for each study (over 5,000 household respondents for trend comparisons across all four studies). The four-page printed survey captured over 100 metrics on the floral-purchasing behaviors of U.S. consumer households: what they buy, where they buy, when they buy, why they buy, and how much they spend on fresh cut flowers and indoor potted plants. The survey also captured a 30-attribute customer service and satisfaction evaluation of the floral businesses where the households shopped, including florist shops, garden centers, floral mass-marketers, and floral Internet-based businesses.
The survey methodology comprised mailed surveys for the year 2000, 2007, and 2013 studies, and a mixed-mode survey (mailed surveys plus Internet-based surveys) for the 2019 study (Dillman, 2014). For this reporting, the survey metric of interest is the “Household incidence of floral purchasing for Valentine’s Day”, measured as “yes”
(1), or “no” (0). This metric measured any type of floral purchase (the floral definition previously described to the survey respondent) by any member of the household for Valentine’s Day. In the P&P reporting, the purchasing metric is computed as the percentage of floral-buying households that made at least one floral purchase for Valentine’s Day for the year surveyed.
Household Incidence of Consumer Floral Purchasing for the Top Five Floral Categories, 2019
Nearly one-half of all floral-buying households throughout the U.S. (49%) purchased floral products for Valentine’s Day in 2019. Of the top five floral categories of usage by consumer households in 2019, Valentine’s Day was ranked third, behind floral purchasing for Birthdays (60%), and Mother’s Day (54%). With 49% household usage, Valentine’s Day ranked higher than Funeral/ Sympathy (37%), and Home Décor floral purchasing (36%). With Valentine’s Day occurring somewhat early in the year, and its relatively large impact on consumer purchasing, it symbolically heralds the beginning of consumer floral-purchasing for the new year. The floral industry needs to embrace the importance of Valentine’s Day, and understand that the Valentine’s Day purchase may likely lead to more consumer floral purchasing throughout the year.
Trend in Household Incidence of Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day
The historical household purchasing trends for Valentine’s Day are shown in Figure 1. Since 1996, there has been a continual slight decline in the household incidence of floral purchase for Valentine’s Day, from 53% of floral-buying households in 1996 to 49% in 2019, a four percentage-point decline over 23 years. While it appears that the declining purchasing trend has “bottomed-out” in 2019, a “quadratic-fit” trend line signaling a bottoming was not significant at the 90% confidence level, indicating that the slight linear decline is projected to continue. This decline in household incidence of purchasing is likely not “felt” by the floral industry, as the number of households in the U.S. continues to expand at a higher rate (over 1% annually), compared to the decline in household purchase incidence (less than one-fifth of 1% annually). Since the incidence of floral purchase for Valentine’s Day is relatively high, and relatively stable, the growth in floral sales for Valentine’s Day will likely continue, as long as the number of households in the U.S. continues to rise (US Census projections up through 2030 denote a continued rise in U.S. households.).
Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day By Consumer Age
The historical household purchasing trends for Valentine’s Day by consumer age group are shown in Figure 2. Over time, it appears that the age-group purchasing differences for Valentine’s Day that were once large (1996) are now diminishing. Although the Under 35 age group has recently shown a slight decline in purchase incidence for Valentine’s Day, this age group still attains the overall highest level of floral purchase incidence for Valentine’s Day (55%). Since 2007, the 65 & Older age group has made the strongest gains in purchase incidence for Valentine’s Day (32% in 2007, to 47% in 2019), compared to other age groups. Both age groups (largely Millennials and Baby Boomers) are not only large in size in the US population (about 72 million in US population for each group in 2019), but have also recently witnessed strong gains in household growth. (McCue, 2023).
The purchasing strength of the Valentine’s Day holiday is likely being fueled by both the youngest and the oldest age groups, largely the “Millennials” and the “Baby Boomers”, which currently represent the two largest “generations” in the U.S. An effective marketing strategy for Valentine’s Day should likely target either or both consumer groups with specific communication appeals and age-appropriate floral offerings. This market dynamic for Valentine’s Day may pose a challenge for retailers in achieving a successful Valentine’s Day, given that the two largest consumer segments influencing Valentine’s Day floral are at the opposite ends of the age spectrum.
Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day By Floral Spending Levels
The historical household purchasing trends for Valentine’s Day by level of annual household floral spending is shown in Figure 3. Over the past twenty years, the “big”
and “moderate” floral-spending households (based on annual floral spending) have shown a slight decline in the incidence of floral purchase for Valentine’s Day, whereas the more “minimal” floral-spending households ($100 or less) have witnessed an increase in purchase incidence for Valentine’s Day over that 20-year period. Other floral-purchasing occasions generally do not show these purchasing trends, or fail to show them as strongly as Valentine’s Day (data not shown). The consumer purchasing trends by level of household floral spending strongly suggest that the Valentine’s Day holiday is bringing new buyers (new buyers are often minimal buyers) into the floral market. Among floral industry members, we have often heard the phrase, “If Valentine’s Day is good, the rest of the year is usually good.” The P&P consumer floral purchasing data supports that claim!
Correlations of Household Valentine’s Day Floral Purchasing with Floral Purchasing for Other Occasions
Correlations represent statistics that measures the level of association among two things, shown as a decimal number between –1 (negative association), 0 (no association), and +1 (positive association). Correlations for floral purchasing categories show how the purchasing of one floral category is associated with (or influences) the purchasing of another floral category (positively or negatively). A high positive correlation among two floral categories shows that as one floral category is purchased, the likelihood of purchase of the other floral category is high. When correlations are computed among data scored as binary (e.g. 0, 1), the highest (lowest) correlation score obtainable is not 1 (-1), but about 0.67 (-0.67), due to the restriction of the data range. Since the P&P “Incidence of Purchase” data is scored 0 or 1, computed correlations for this type of data will likely be understated from the actual correlation.
To examine how consumer household floral purchasing for Valentine’s Day may affect other floral purchases of the household throughout the year, P&P computed correlation coefficients for the Valentine’s Day purchasing data with purchasing data of ten selected floral occasions for each of the study periods from 2000 to 2019 using the SPSS Statistical Package (SPSS Inc., 1999). The correlations are shown in Table1.
The correlations in Table 1 reveal that Valentine’s Day floral purchasing has greatest association with floral purchasing for Mother’s Day, Birthdays, and Proms/ Dances (highlighted with red boxes in Table 1). Of the ten occasions selected for comparison, all ten show some positive purchasing correlation with Valentine’s Day over the past 20 years (note no negative correlations in Table 1), which suggests that Valentine’s Day purchasing has a broad impact on consumer floral purchasing for many floral occasions. There also is a general trend of slightly lower Valentine’s Day correlation between the study years of 2013 and 2019 across many occasions, a period of time which showed a relatively large expansion of floral buyers in the US market (Prince, 2023). This lowering of correlation over this time period supports the expansion of the floral market via Valentine’s Day, with more minimal floral buyers purchasing largely for Valentine’s Day only, hence lowering correlation with other floral purchasing occasions. These correlation statistics over time also strongly support the P&P thesis that Valentine’s Day floral purchasing is bringing new buyers into the floral market.
Overall, the P&P consumer floral data reveals that Valentine’s Day is not only a key sales day for the floral industry, but also a key market builder for the industry throughout the year. Given that Valentine’s Day attracts new buyers into the floral market, and has a positive influence on other occasion floral sales throughout the year, it may be the most important holiday for the floral industry (although P&P likely needs more statistical analysis of other floral occasion data for verification).
P&P’s Floral Market Projection for Valentine’s Day 2024
P&P has been making Valentine’s Day floral market projections for the U.S. market over the past several years. Our floral market projections require four key pieces of information: 1) the number of U.S. households in a given year (provided by the U.S. Census Bureau and refined by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University), 2) the floral “Participation Rate”, the percentage of U.S. households that make at least one floral purchase in a given year, calculated by P&P through survey “bridging and calibration” across several P&P floral-market studies, 3) the “Incidence of Purchase” for a particular floral occasion (estimates provided by P&P survey data), and 4) the average floral dollar spending per household for a particular occasion (estimates provided by P&P survey data). The annual P&P Valentine’s Day floral-market projections for the years 2018 to 2023, and the newest projection for 2024 are shown in Figure 4. In 2021, no estimates were computed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The P&P U.S. Valentine’s Day floral market estimates (at retail) prior to Covid-19 ranged from $3.3 billion (2020) to $3.5 billion (2019). After Covid-19, the 2022 U.S. floral market estimate for Valentine’s Day came in at $3.1 billion, the lowest of the previous past few years. However, the 2023 market estimate rebounded strongly at $3.6 billion, but with the help of recent inflation, and an unexpected surge in younger households (Prince & Prince, 2023). The P&P U.S. Valentine’s Day floral market estimate for 2024 is projected to be $4.0 billion dollars (at retail value), a relatively strong gain from 2023, and with inflation also taken into account. This value includes all the value-added amenities to the floral product and any delivery/ service fees associated with the consumer floral purchase. These recent estimates signify growth in the U.S. Valentine’s Day floral market since Covid-19, and boost optimism for the future of the Valentine’s Day floral holiday in the U.S.”
*This article is excerpted from perishablenews.com website, published February 7, 2024