Prince and Prince release their Valentines forecast
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A Prince & Prince Market Report Prince & Prince Forecast 50 Million U.S. Households
To Make Floral Purchases for Valentine’s Day 2022
Insight from the Prince & Prince
U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey
Thomas L. Prince, Ph.D.
Timothy A. Prince, Ph.D.
Prince & Prince, Inc.
Columbus, OH USA
Release Date: Feb. 8th, 2022
Prince & Prince Forecast 50 Million U.S. Households
To Make Floral Purchases for Valentine’s Day 2022
Special Note: This Prince & Prince (P&P) floral market report utilizes the latest 2020 U.S. Household Census estimates and makes household projections for 2022 based on historical Census trends. The latest update of the P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey was completed in 2019 (prior to the Covid-19 global pandemic), and trends and projections from those household floral-purchasing estimates for Valentine’s Day are used in this reporting (Prince & Prince, 2020b). P&P emphasizes that this 2022 Valentine’s Day floral purchasing estimate is a Consumer Demand Projection. Any floral supply/ demand imbalances related to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in an undersupply of desired floral product at retail and mass-market outlets during this Valentine’s Day holiday, will likely result in a lower floral- purchasing estimate being realized.
Prince & Prince, Inc. (P&P), a leader in market research focused on the floral and green plant industries, has released a projection for the number of U.S. households that will make floral purchases for Valentine’s Day 2022, and an estimate for the total retail value of Valentine’s Day floral purchasing by consumer households in the U.S. As most floral buyers know, Valentine’s Day is February 14th, and in 2022, Valentine’s Day falls on Monday. So all those “love birds” contemplating a Valentine’s Day floral purchase have the whole week prior, and also likely the weekend to make a floral purchase. However, given the general product-supply and distribution vagaries related to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic, P&P suggest that interested floral buyers call their local florist, or get to the supermarket, or contact their favorite floral outlet/ website as soon as possible, and not wait till the weekend! Notwithstanding, P&P project that 50 million U.S. households (49.99 million) will have made one or more fresh floral purchases to celebrate the “Love, Hugs, and Kisses” with significant people in their lives, in or out of the household. And what better way to say, “I love you!”, than with flowers. The P&P U.S. aggregate consumer floral spending projection for Valentine’s Day 2022 is $3.1 billion dollars at retail, including all fresh floral products (fresh cut flowers, including roses, arrangements, bouquets, bunches, single stems, and corsages, and indoor potted flowering and foliage plants & planters) and any associated delivery/ service fees. While the projected floral market value for Valentine’s Day 2022 is considered large, it is actually about $200 million lower than P&P’s 2020 Valentine’s Day market projection, made just prior to the on-set of the Covid-19 pandemic (Prince & Prince, 2020a). This somewhat lower floral dollar market estimate is due largely to continuing shifts in consumer shopping patterns among the various floral channels, volatility recently heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the resulting closing and limited hours of some retail floral establishments. In general, a fair number of U.S. floral-buying households have shifted from higher service, customized design, and higher-priced floral purchases at traditional retail florist businesses to more self-service, standardized design, and generally lower-priced floral offerings provided at numerous mass-market and Internet-based floral businesses (P&P has historical floral-channel share data to support these claims). While the overall floral market expands slowly in household numbers, with more floral buyers making purchases for this Valentine’s Day than for any previous Valentine’s Day, the shifts in household purchasing at the various floral channels dilutes the average historical dollars spent per household on floral, thus lowering somewhat the projected market dollar value at retail for Valentine’s Day 2022. Thus, while aggregate floral-product unit sales may be up for the 2022 Valentine’s Day holiday, the aggregate floral-dollars spent by consumers throughout the U.S. is slightly lower than in 2020, even when adjusting for recent inflationary pressures.
According to P&P market survey estimates, Valentine’s Day is still the second largest “floral holiday” for the U.S. floral industry, in terms of consumer dollar spending on floral products, with floral spending second only to Mother’s Day. P&P’s aggregate 2019 Mother’s Day floral spending projection was $4.5 billion (Prince & Prince, 2019; due to the Covid-19 pandemic, P&P could not make reliable projections for Mother’s Day in 2020, and in 2021). For 2022, P&P also project that each floral-buying household, on average, will spend about $62 on Valentine’s Day floral products, including all household members that make a floral purchase, with associated delivery and other service fees included.
Drivers Influencing the Size of the Valentine’s Day Floral Market
Since Valentine’s Day is a major floral holiday, one key driver influencing the size of the Valentine’s Day floral market is the continued increase in the number of households in the U.S. P&P’s first consumer floral tracking survey was conducted in 1996, when the U.S. household population was 100 million households (Chart 1). Over the next 25 years, the number of U.S. households climbed to 130 million, or a net gain of 30 million households over the 25-year period, an average gain of 1.2 million households per year.
Examining Chart 1, one can ascertain that the growth rate in U.S. households has slowed somewhat over the past decade. From 1996 through 2007, the U.S. gained almost 1.5 million households per year, and from 2013 to 2021, the U.S. gained less than 1 million households per year (875,000 households). P&P projects 134 million households by 2025. Thus, the slowing growth rate of U.S. households, if it continues well into the future, will be a challenge to growth in the size of the floral market for Valentine’s Day going forward.
Another challenge to growth in Valentine’s Day floral sales is the downward projection of another key floral metric: the household incidence of floral purchasing for Valentine’s Day (Chart 2). This metric is simply the percentage of floral-buying households that make one or more floral purchases specifically for Valentine’s Day. From our first consumer floral survey in 1996 until our survey in 2013, the incidence of floral purchases for Valentine’s Day witnessed a slow, but steady decline (53% to 49%).
Start here . . . discuss stat trend . . . bottoming
However, the possible good news is that the declining purchasing trend likely bottomed in 2019 at 49%, but P&P needs additional future survey data to validate this claim. To gain further evidence, P&P conducted a statistical trend analysis to ascertain if the historical data trend shown in Chart 2 best fit a linear trend line, suggesting a continuing of the purchasing decline, or if the historical data trend best fit a quadratic trend line (with an inflection point), suggesting a bottoming of the historical purchasing trend (P&P used pre-planned, single degree-of-freedom orthogonal contrasts testing for linear and quadratic trends using the SPSS MANOVA procedure). This statistical analysis comprised household floral-purchasing data for Valentine’s Day from over 5,500 randomly-selected floral-buying households throughout the U.S. over the five study periods. This statistical analysis indicated that the linear downward trend was statistically significant at the 90% confidence level, and the quadratic bottoming trend was not statistically significant, even at a lower 75% confidence level. So the historical trend data does not currently support an end to the slow decline in the incidence of U.S. household floral purchasing for Valentine’ Day. However, future floral-purchasing data will likely tell the story.
Industry Perceptions and P&P Perceptions Toward Valentine’s Day
At P&P, we sounded the alarm bells in 2015 with our report, “Historical Downward Trend in Consumer Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day: A “Wake-Up” Call for the Industry?” The response that we largely received from members of the floral industry was . . . “It’s too big already!” . . . “Valentine’s Day is problematic – – weather, distribution issues, cut-flower crop timing, etc.” . . . “We should likely focus more on other holidays and occasions, as well as everyday floral purchasing”. While not downplaying these floral industry perceptions and concerns, P&P believes that Valentine’s Day, with all of its faults and imperfections, has an underlying element of marketing power that has the potential to generate more floral sales, and not just for Valentine’s Day. Quite simply, Valentine’s Day brings new, young buyers into the floral market. The floral-purchasing incidence for Valentine’s Day among households under the age of 35 is higher than any other age group (55% in 2019). And the 65 & older age groups has also made great gains in Valentine’s Day floral purchasing over the past decade. It is the interplay of flowers and sentiments of love, the “experience” of that special day, embellished and enjoyed with flowers, that ultimately brings new, largely young buyers, into the world of flowers. Valentine’s Day also adds to older buyers’ usage and experiences with flowers, relating to fond memories of the past, as well as to the present. At P&P, we think the floral industry needs to build on these concepts, ideas, and market trends uniquely tied to Valentine’s Day, to expand the overall floral market, and not take Valentine’s Day for granted.
About the P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey
The P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey has been conducted seven times over the past 25 years. The survey research has two key objectives: 1) to identify and track specific consumer floral-product purchasing (five fresh cut-flower categories, and over twelve indoor potted plant categories), and floral purchasing for specific holidays, events, and occasions (including self-purchase and home decoration), and 2) to provide a comprehensive tracking of consumer perceptions toward various floral businesses where purchase are made (up to three floral businesses selected and evaluated on 30 attributes by each respondent).
To support the first objective, the research identifies the types of consumers who buy fresh floral products, what they buy, where they buy, when they buy, why they buy, & how much they spend on fresh cut flowers & indoor potted flowering and foliage plants/ planters. P&P has been tracking U.S. consumer floral purchasing behavior for Valentine’s Day, and floral purchasing for more than 20 other holidays, events, and occasions over the past twenty-five years with their periodic nationwide surveys of floral-buying households (Prince & Prince, 2020b). Thus, P&P is able to identify salient consumer floral-purchasing trends over time for members of the floral industry. P&P can examine floral purchasing trends for specific holidays, events, and occasions overall, and identify the specific consumer demographic segments driving the purchasing trends (e.g. age groups, income groups, educational attainment groups, urbanization, U.S. regions, etc.). With this robust and comprehensive database of several thousand randomly-selected floral-buying households over seven time periods, P&P has the ability to model, track, and make fairly accurate trend projections for the 100+ floral-purchasing metrics captured in the survey. P&P can relay these historical floral-product and occasion purchasing trends to their clients in the floral industry, who can then incorporate this salient market information into their floral business strategies.
To accomplish the second objective of the research, the P&P survey has a section devoted to a comprehensive evaluation of the floral businesses used by the households, and measures of the household’s fresh cut flower and indoor potted plant spending levels at each floral business (grouped by channel). The survey also measures customer satisfaction, purchasing loyalty, and the household’s future purchasing intentions with each floral business rated. P&P categorizes each floral business rated into one of 11 defined channels (e.g. florist shop, supermarket, super-discounter, Internet/ 800-Number, home/ hardware center, traditional garden center, wholesale club, farmer’s market, street vendor, etc.). P&P then profiles the perceived strengths and weaknesses of each floral channel based on the consumer ratings of the floral businesses. For each survey period, P&P obtains over 2,500 floral business evaluations, with each evaluation comprising 30-attribute ratings (e.g. floral quality, selection, pricing, color and fragrance offering, convenience, sales assistance/ courtesy, floral knowledge, floral-care information, value, etc.). The latest 2019 P&P consumer survey employed a “mixed-mode” surveying methodology, utilizing both mail and Internet-based survey methods, now deemed essential by top market researchers to obtain the most representative and valid consumer survey information (Dillman et. al., 2014).
P&P now opens the on-site seminar of the 2019 consumer floral research to all members of the floral industry and allied trade (includes data-trend market projections for 2022). Interested companies should contact P&P for on-site seminar details (one or two-day seminar, with a Q&A session). The 2019 P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey seminar is also now available on flash drive (800+ slides), but without a Q&A session. Please contact P&P for more details.
Literature Cited
Dillman, D.A., Smyth, J.D. and Christian, L.M. (2014). Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys (Fourth Edition). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2020a). Prince & Prince Forecast 49 Million U.S. Households To Make Floral Purchases for Valentine’s Day 2020. (P&P Market Report). Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2020b). The 2019 Prince & Prince U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey (One or Two-Day On-Site Seminar with Q&A, or Seminar on Flash Drive). Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2019). Prince & Prince Project a $4.5 Billion Dollar U.S. Consumer Floral Market for Mother’s Day 2019. (P&P Market Report). Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2015). Historical Downward Trend in Consumer Floral Purchasing for Valentine’s Day: A “Wake-Up” Call for the Industry? Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc. (P&P Market Report).
About the Authors
Drs. Tom and Tim Prince, formerly of The Ohio State University, are brothers and co-founders of Prince & Prince, Inc. (P&P), a leading marketing research specialist serving the floral and green plant industries. Over the past 30 years, P&P has completed more than 75 major marketing research projects, floral-product tests, and countless reports for the floral industry in the U.S., and has also conducted floral market research projects in Canada, and in Europe. P&P has research experience in both experimental research design & analysis as well as market survey research design & analysis, and often combine both research domains in the conduct of floral research for their clients. P&P conceptualize, design, and implement market research projects and floral-product tests for floral companies, floral associations, and the floral allied trade up and down the floral distribution channels. For more information, e-mail Tom at FloralMktResearch@att.net, or call/ text Tom’s mobile number at 614-264-0939.
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