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US Valentine's Day floral market projected at $3.3 billion

7 January 2016

P&P is predicting that $3.3 billion dollars of flower sales at retail, including all fresh floral products (fresh-cut flowers and/or indoor potted plants) and any associated delivery/ handling services.

Valentine’s Day is the second largest ‘floral holiday’ for the US floral industry, in terms of consumer dollar spending, second to Mother’s Day. P&P projects that for 2016, slightly more than 44 million households will purchase fresh cut flowers (mainly roses) and/or potted flowering plants to express emotions for a loved one, significant other, or special person in or out of the household.

It also projects that each purchasing household, on average, will spend about $74, including all household members making a floral purchase, and with associated delivery/ service fees included. 

Prince & Prince has been tracking U.S. consumer floral purchasing behavior for Valentine’s Day (and for 20+ other holidays, events, and occasions) over the past two decades with their periodic surveys of floral-buying households that are randomly selected throughout the US (over 6,000 surveys completed since the initial survey in 1996). It says that it is able to identify salient consumer floral-purchasing trends over time for the floral industry.

P&P has previously reported that the overall percentage of US floral-buying households making a floral purchase for Valentine’s Day, currently at a rather high percentage level (projected at 50% for 2016), has fallen slightly, yet continuously, over the past two decades, which it deems a ‘wake-up call’ for the industry.

"Although the household purchasing incidence for this holiday is quite high, it has been trending slightly lower with each periodic P&P survey over the past twenty years, except when Valentine’s Day holiday falls on a week-end,” suggested Tom Prince, President of Prince & Prince, Inc. “When the holiday falls on a week-end (as in 2016), the P&P historical data reveals that a slightly higher percentage of households purchase floral for Valentine’s Day, higher than predicted trend, but at a somewhat lower average purchase value, suggesting that supermarkets and other floral mass-marketers are likely expanding the Valentine’s Day floral market to new buyers when the holiday falls on a week-end.”

The company’s demographic profile of household floral purchasing reveals that younger-aged households (under age 35), and households with teenagers, lead the floral-purchasing trends for Valentine’s Day.

For more information, visit: www.floralmarketresearch.com