38 Surprising Valentine’s Day Statistics Marketers Will Love

Valen­tine’s Day isn’t just for cou­ples. Here are the con­sumer spend­ing stats and facts mar­keters need to know about the most roman­tic hol­i­day.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Valentine’s Day is this Sat­ur­day, and U.S. con­sumers are expect­ed to spend more than $18.9 bil­lion – a record high boost­ed by increased dig­i­tal sales. Feb­ru­ary 14th is an impor­tant date in the mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar, and the sta­tis­tics show it isn’t just cou­ples mak­ing pur­chas­es for each oth­er. Recent years have seen peo­ple buy­ing gifts for oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, co-work­ers, class­mates, teach­ers, and pets – or even self-gift­ing. Here are the key stats and facts mar­keters need to know about how con­sumers are spend­ing on the most roman­tic day of the year.


Valentine’s Day Stats

U.S. Consumer Spending

  • Con­sumers are expect­ed to spend $18.9 bil­lion on Valen­tine’s Day 2015, up from the $17.3 bil­lion con­sumers spent on the hol­i­day in 2014.
  • 54 per­cent of Amer­i­cans will cel­e­brate Valentine’s Day with their loved ones this year, slight­ly less than the 60 per­cent in 2013.
  • The aver­age per­son is expect­ed to spend $142.31 on typ­i­cal Valen­tine’s Day gifts, such as can­dy, flow­ers, and jew­el­ry, up from the $133.91 they spent last year.
  • On aver­age, men will spend $190.53 on their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, while women spend $96.58 on their part­ners.
  • 53.2 per­cent of con­sumers, will opt for some­thing sweet, with total can­dy spend­ing expect­ed to reach $1.7 bil­lion.
  • Con­sumers will also spend gen­er­ous­ly on flow­ers, with 37.8 per­cent of con­sumers spend­ing $2.1 bil­lion on flow­ers.
  • Big spenders look­ing to make grand ges­tures of love, 21.1 per­cent of con­sumers will spend $4.8 bil­lion on jew­el­ry this year.
  • Jew­el­ry was the most expen­sive gift pur­chased over­all by the 35- to 44-year-olds, with an aver­age spend of $210.30. (business2community.com)
  • More than half (51.2 per­cent) of con­sumers will send Valen­tine’s Day greet­ing cards.
  • 35.1 per­cent of con­sumers will spend $3.6 bil­lion on trav­el and enter­tain­ment plans such as a spe­cial week­end away, or a trip to the movies.
  • 15.8 per­cent of con­sumers will give gifts such as cloth­ing, account­ing for almost $2 bil­lion in spend­ing.
  • 14 per­cent of con­sumers will give gift cards to their bet­ter halves, account­ing for $1.5 bil­lion in spend­ing.
  • 37 per­cent will cel­e­brate with an evening out, spend­ing an esti­mat­ed total of $3.5 bil­lion.
  • These days, Valentine’s Day isn’t just for cou­ples; peo­ple also show their appre­ci­a­tion in the form of gifts for fam­i­ly mem­bers (59.4 per­cent), friends (21.7 per­cent), teach­ers (20.4 per­cent), and col­leagues (12.1 per­cent).
  • Con­sumers will, on aver­age, spend $26.26 on fam­i­ly, and $6.30 on classmates/teachers.
  • 21.2 per­cent of con­sumers will also spend on their pets! Spend­ing an aver­age of $5.28 each, for a total around $703 mil­lion.
  • Adults age 25–34 will spend the most out of all the age groups sur­veyed, spend­ing an aver­age of $213.04. 35- to 44-year-olds will spend an aver­age of $176.21, and 18- to 24-year-olds will spend an aver­age of $168.95.
  • Con­sumers 65 and old­er feel less of a need to cel­e­brate Valentine’s Day than any oth­er age group. (business2community.com)
  • 25- to 34-year-old con­sumers spent the most on co-work­ers with an aver­age spend of $83.80. (business2community.com)
  • Most con­sumers (36.5 per­cent) will vis­it depart­ment stores to pick up a gift, with oth­ers vis­it­ing depart­ment stores (35.2 per­cent). A fair pro­por­tion will vis­it spe­cial­ty stores (19.4 per­cent) and florists (18.7 per­cent) in their search for the per­fect gift.

UK Consumer Spending

  • Brits are pre­dict­ed to spend a health­ly £1.9 bil­lion on Valen­tine’s Day this year, up from £1.3 bil­lion last year, with the aver­age per per­son spend esti­mat­ed to be around £53.38.
  • In total £557 mil­lion will be spent going out on din­ners, £461 mil­lion on gifts, £211 mil­lion on flow­ers, £173 mil­lion on drinks, £115 mil­lion on choco­lates and £57 mil­lion on cards.
  • Men spend more than women with an aver­age of £70.47 com­pared to £39.58.

Online Spending

  • Online Valentine’s Day shop­pers spent an aver­age of $175.80 in 2014, an amount 31 per­cent high­er than Valentine’s Day shop­pers in gen­er­al.
  • One quar­ter of con­sumers (25.1 per­cent) say they will shop online (com­pared to 26.1 per­cent in 2014), with mil­len­ni­als aged 18–24 most like­ly to spend online (36.5 per­cent of this group say they would spend online).
  • 26.1 per­cent of con­sumers plan to use their smart­phones to research prod­ucts and com­pare prices, as com­pared with 24 per­cent in 2014.
  • The results fur­ther con­firm research that men are now more like­ly to use their smart­phones to research, eval­u­ate, and make pur­chas­es, with 30.9 per­cent of men using smart­phones in their pur­chase jour­neys as opposed to 21.7 per­cent of women. By com­par­i­son, 27.5 per­cent of men and 20.8 per­cent of women used smart­phones last year.
  • The con­trast was slight­ly less pro­nounced on tablets, with 35.4 per­cent of men use tablets to research prod­ucts or com­pare poten­tial gifts as opposed to 29.3 per­cent of women.
  • Approx­i­mate­ly one-third of con­sumers will pur­chase Valen­tine’s Day items on their tablets.
  • One in five looked up retail­er infor­ma­tion on their devices such as loca­tion and store hours.
  • Online shop­pers ages 18–34 were more than twice as like­ly as oth­ers to per­son­al­ize gift cards with an audio or video clip (14 per­cent) or with a pho­to (27 per­cent).
  • Valentine’s Day shop­pers wait until the last minute even for online shop­ping. (Adobe)
  • Shop­ping pat­terns are high­ly depen­dent on the day of week that Valentine’s falls. (Adobe)
  • 2013 lagged behind 2012 in total shop­ping the week pri­or to Valentine’s, but made up for it the week of Valentine’s because Valentine’s fell on a Thurs­day rather than a Tues­day. (Adobe)
  • Shop­pers start 3 weeks ear­ly for Valen­tine’s Day. That peri­od of ear­ly shop­ping sets the tone for YoY growth. This means mar­keters don’t need to wait until the week of Valentine’s to see if their pro­mo­tions are work­ing. (Adobe)
  • Mia­mi, Chica­go, Hous­ton, Los Ange­les, and New York City are the most roman­tic cities in the U.S., talk­ing the most about their thoughts and plans on the day on Twit­ter. (Brand­watch)
  • 71 per­cent of the chat­ter tak­ing place on Twit­ter is by females. (Brand­watch)
  • 5 per­cent of the con­ver­sa­tions on Twit­ter around Valen­tine’s Day are from sin­gles.

Over­all the sta­tis­tics point to an increas­ing will­ing­ness from con­sumers to spend. Matthew Shay, NRF Pres­i­dent and CEO, spoke of how the results were a pos­i­tive sign for the econ­o­my and spend­ing health: “It’s encour­ag­ing to see con­sumers show inter­est in spend­ing on gifts and Valentine’s Day-relat­ed mer­chan­dise – a good sign for con­sumer sen­ti­ment as we head into 2015.” (All stats from the NRF unless oth­er­wise spec­i­fied.)

Sources

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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