Valentine's Day prices jump 17 percent for last-minute online shoppers
Image credit: Ylanite Koppens via Stock Snap
You smell that? It’s the very seasonal aroma of love in the air, with a little hint of money sprinkled in for good measure. According to data from Slice Intelligence, the price of Valentine’s Day’s hallmark tokens of affection: flowers, chocolates, jewelry, and stuffed animals, all jump an average of 17 percent on the day of love compared to the first 13 days of February.
Flower prices change the most for last-minute shoppers, with an average price jump of 27 percent, followed by a 21 percent increase in jewelry, 17 percent for stuffed animals, and 4 percent for chocolate.
Valentine’s Day staples peak at different points leading up to the holiday
Most Valentine’s Day buyers purchase their gifts online well before the holiday, with 94 percent of flowers, chocolates, jewelry, and stuffed animals bought online before February 14.
The biggest buying day for chocolate in the lead-up to V-Day 2017 was February 11, accounting for 8.9 percent of sales in the period. Flowers had their day in the sun on Feb 13 (16.4 percent), jewelry shined brightest on Feb 9 (8.8 percent), and stuffed animals had their fill on Feb 7 (9.3 percent).
Female buyers drive Valentine’s Day sales almost across the board
While males outspend females in all four Valentine’s Day categories, females out-purchase males in three of the four major categories, flowers being the lone holdout. Females even purchase more jewelry than males. Sixty-three percent of jewelry purchased prior to Valentine’s Day is purchased by females, while 53 percent of jewelry-related revenue is generated by their male counterparts. Flowers are the only item with a large differential between the genders as men generated 74 percent of flower revenue around the holiday, and about 71 percent of the flowers sold.
Females buy more jewelry, chocolate, and stuffed animals than males
Flowers are only category where males out-buy females around Valentine's Day
Copyright © Rakuten Intelligence 2019. January 14 - February 14, 2017. n=63,643 U.S. Online Shoppers
Love may be in the air, but it will cost you
The average Valentine’s Day shopper spent $62.97 on Valentine’s Day purchases, and bought 1.5 items in the month leading up to the holiday.
Valentine's Day gifts get more expensive as February 14 approaches
though most categories peak days before the holiday
Copyright © Rakuten Intelligence 2019.
The most popular item is jewelry, accounting for 75 percent of sales, and costing an average of $51.50, followed by stuffed animals, at 15 percent, with an average price of $16.20, flowers and chocolate, at 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively, with shoppers spending $39.43 on flowers, and $10.47 on chocolate.
Jewelry rings up the most online Valentine's Day sales
as a higher price doesn't deter love-struck buyers
Copyright © Rakuten Intelligence 2019. January 14 - February 14, 2017. n=77,324 U.S. Online Shoppers
About this data
With a panel of over 5.5 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 NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.
