It was a very happy Valentine’s Day for retailers that have an e-Commerce presence. Online shopping taking place the week before the Hallmark holiday increased 8% over 2013.
Although shoppers browsing the web seemed to shop more, leading to an increase in sales across several categories, in-store sales saw a surge on Valentine’s Day.
The RetailNext Insights team analyzed 5.4 million shopping trips to U.S. specialty and large-format retailers, comparing traffic, sales and other metrics leading up to, during and after Valentine’s Day. Overall, men’s stores saw a 13.8% decrease in sales the day before Valentine’s Day (versus the same day in 2013). However, this category saw more than a 22% increase on the actual holiday. This pattern is consistent for women’s stores, which saw a year-over-year decrease of 13.5% in sales the day before, but a 15.2% boost the day of.
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Of all retailers examined, sales generated the three days before Valentine’s Day fell 7.4% year over year, with traffic declining 6.7% over the same period.
These results lead us to believe maybe, just maybe, that some folks procrastinated a bit too much this year, and only turned to brick-and-mortar stores as a last resort.
But were there any other factors that may have played a role?
“This year, Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday (2014) vs. Thursday (2013), which we suspect contributed to the huge increases in traffic and sales on the actual day-of, as more people could go out and shop,” said Chitra Balasubramanian, VP of Insights at RetailNext. "The increase in traffic and sales on Valentine’s Day compared to the prior year may also be a result of increased celebration of the holiday this year, or perhaps even greater procrastination than in the prior year.”
One thing that’s not at all surprising, though? The exponential boom in e-Commerce sales.
"As e-commerce penetration grows along with assurances of expedited shipping, we would expect some physical store declines in traffic and sales during the periods when e-commerce can reliably service customers,” Balasubramanian noted. "Interestingly, those shoppers who spent money in physical retail stores this year during the three days leading up to Valentine’s Day spent 6.6% more on average than those in the prior year comparable period. This is a positive indicator for brick & mortar retailers as it could reflect the idea that shoppers in the brick & mortar environment are increasingly committed to spending once they are in the physical store.”
So what do you think caused these Valentine’s Day shopping results?
