Online candy sales hop-up 71 percent for Easter, but sales trail behind the Holiday Season
Image credit: Tim Gouw (via Unsplash)
From chocolate bunnies to Cadbury Creme Eggs, online shoppers spent 71 percent more on chocolate and candy during the two weeks preceding Easter in 2016 compared to 2015. Slice Intelligence reports this upward trend is continuing this year. With three days remaining before Easter, candy sales are up another 92 percent over last year. However, while online chocolate and candy sales are hopping higher during Easter, the winter Holiday Season sees the most chocolate sales. Chocolate and candy sales were two times higher than the monthly 2016 average in December alone.
Easter chocolate has less spring in its step than other holidays
While confection sales do increase during Easter, the holiday trails behind Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine's Day. Chocolate and candy sales more than doubled in the two weeks leading up to Christmas relative to an average two-week period in 2016. Similarly, candy sales jumped 52 percent in the lead up to Halloween and 50 percent prior to Valentine's Day. Easter, in contrast, only saw a 13 percent increase compared to the 2016 average period.
Sales of Easter-themed confection pick up about ten days prior to Easter and peak four days later. Like Easter, Halloween and Valentine's Day see a sudden spike in themed candy sales just days before the holiday. Only Christmas breaks this sales pattern, when candy and chocolate sales surge throughout December.
Easter-egg hunters will find a lot of Lindt chocolate in their basket this year
Slice Intelligence looked at what kinds of treats have been popular in the weeks preceding Easter. Lindt chocolate was the top online Easter chocolate seller in 2016, accounting for 6 percent of candy purchased online during the period. M&M's, Jelly Belly’s and Cadbury eggs rounded out the top four.
About this data
With a panel of over 4.7 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.