As this Fall has been characterized by the manic events of the election season, Slice Intelligence decided to take a breather and look at the lighter side of autumn. We examined the current state of sugar, spice, and everything nice– online pumpkin spice sales to be exact. While Starbucks has been offering the latte since September 6th, online shoppers have already passed their peak pumpkin spice consumption.
Data shows spending on pumpkin spice products tops off during the first week of Fall, a trend that has continued since 2014. Don't worry, the flavor isn't going out of favor, spending on pumpkin spice products is up 22 percent this September compared to the same period last year.
While pumpkin spice products sell the most in autumn, gingerbread products have the most seasonal demand. Sixty-five percent of gingerbread purchases occur between November and December, with sales topping during the week of December 2nd. To compare, 53 percent of pumpkin spice purchases are made between September and December.
Pumpkin spice is more popular than gingerbread
Even though Starbucks invented the pumpkin spice latte in 2003, the flavor is already more popular than gingerbread. Pumpkin spice products have generated three times the revenue of gingerbread-flavored items over the last two years. While pumpkin spice is popular, peppermint is by far the largest seasonal flavor. Peppermint oil and gum are popular products consumed throughout the year helping boost the flavor's sales.
Coffee drives pumpkin spice's popularity
The majority of pumpkin spice products are for coffee, which accounts for 56 percent of all pumpkin spice purchases. Following coffee, sports and cereal bars are the second most sold pumpkin spice product.
About this data
With a panel of over 4.4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.
Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.
Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.