4 Valentine’s Day confectionery ecommerce insights to know

Chocolate and sweets took a large share of the ecommerce sales for this holiday and category managers are looking at ways to optimise product performance online. We took a closer look at the products directly targeting the occasion in UK grocery and highlight tactics brand can take to gain share on the digital shelf.

With more than 32 million Brits spending nearly £1.45bn* on their loved ones this Valentine’s Day, and with confectionery being the usual gift of choice, it is not surprising that chocolate and sweets took a large share of the ecommerce sales for this holiday and category managers are looking at ways to optimize product performance online.

To help ecommerce managers get the best insights and learnings from Valentine’s Day 2020, we took a closer look at the products directly targeting the occasion in UK grocery to find where they were ranged, promoted and which brands took the biggest share of the digital shelf.

1. Ensure your Valentine’s Day SKUs are optimized to cut through competition.

Valentine’s stock started to appear online from mid-January right up until the big day itself. This assists in driving awareness as shoppers are already looking for gift ideas, and also allows the marketer to target the earlier purchasers.

The full range of SKUs were listed for 2.5 weeks and peaked just 2 days before Valentines; this year, however, there were fewer Valentines specific listings for 2020 vs 2019.

2. Understand if early promotion results in early conversion

If you overlay your sales data to the data below you will be able to understand if shoppers bought closer to the time regardless of any discounts, or if sales promotions resulted in earlier sales. This will help you understand one of your key sales drivers during the holiday period.

The data showed us that for Valentine’s day 2020, 38% of listings were on promotion by the end of January, but as Valentine’s Day drew closer, promotions dipped slightly, yet remained over 30% through 14 February. Additionally, promotions were at a higher level YOY perhaps indicating why there were fewer listings in 2020 as it becomes harder to sustain effective margins.