Retail Insight Center: Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day Spending Up

February in America means two important holidays for retailers: the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day. While the specific items and reasons for purchasing may be different, both are days when retailers aim to get it right either through sales or advertising. To break down this consumer data, the Retail Insight Center released its projected spending for both events to see how it relates to past years.

If these figures are any guide, 2015 may be the best year for consumers in over a decade.

Starting with the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 (Go Patriots!), the RIC estimates that 80 percent of all purchases for the game will be for food and beverages, with roughly 50 percent of people either going to parties, hosting them, or heading to a bar to watch the game. On average, people will spend $77.88 for Super Bowl Sunday, which is up from $68.27 in 2014, suggesting a greater propensity to spend for the big game.

However, the increase in spending on the game might not translate to secondary spending that comes in the form of the multimillion dollar advertising spots during the game. Over 35 percent of adults consider the game the most important part of the Super Bowl, while commercials lag behind at under 20 percent. When asked about the commercials, 80 percent of survey respondents thought of them as “entertainment,” while only 20 percent said they helped raise brand awareness, and almost 17 percent thought they were a waste of time and money. But who doesn’t love seeing Clydesdales and puppies together regardless of whether or not you’d actually buy a case of Budweiser?

Valentine’s Day, on the other hand, is a big spending holiday, and V-Day 2015 might be the biggest spending day of the decade. RIC survey data shows that even though just 54.9 percent of adults will celebrate the holiday, those who do will spend an average of $142.31 on the day, up from the $133.91 spent on 2014. That comes out to a total of $18.9 billion, a new survey high.

Where will this money be spent? According to the data, 70 percent of adults will spend money at department and discount stores, while 25 percent will go online for gifts. Local and specialty stores remain well represented in the survey data, with 30 percent of adults going there this year, while florists will receive a visit from about 20 percent of people. However, the market for Valentine’s Day doesn’t extend to the non-celebrants, of whom a vast majority plan on doing nothing for Valentine’s Day.