The Valentine’s Day Data Showdown: Men vs. Women

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Throughout the year there are spikes in e-commerce shopping. The obvious ones being pre-Christmas (Black Friday in November) and post-Christmas (Boxing Day in December). When we removed November and December for 2014, the chart below is what you end up with. The first obvious spike is Valentine’s day.

When we look at overall spend based on category in the days leading up to Valentine’s day (chart below), you’ll notice that grocery (chocolates, cinnamon hearts, stuck-in-your-teeth red jujubs, etc) are higher than usual, actually 2 times more than usual. This is quite common, as the majority of people coupled or single end up buying candy related paraphernalia just for the fun of it.

The peculiarities are apparent in the sports category along with toy/games and consumer electronics which were up by 4 times their usual spend! Well, buying toys for V-day is not so unusual, this may be stuffed teddy bears that say “I love you” when you poke the stomach. What is a bit unusual is the sports and electronics category being so high. These are usually quite expensive gifts for Valentine’s day! What are people buying exactly? Can we assume that women opt to buy Call of Duty for their BF’s or perhaps an autographed Lebron James jersey to really impress the socks off of him?

But hold your horses, we do see an increase in jewelry by two times compared to other times of the year.  So we could make the assumption that men may buy their honey a diamond ring (only fitting after getting that rad jersey) or at the very least a silver plated bracelet engraved with “I heart you”.

This year, V-day is on a Saturday making it perhaps a bigger revenue generating holiday than 2014. We’re excited and are taking bets.. Who starts buying earlier – men or women? Are we going to see similar buys in sports and electronics? Tell us what you think and stay tuned as we tally up the results later this month.