Mother’s Day Consumer Insights: All About the Customer Experience!

Mother’s Day… the celebratory time of year when children, fathers and husbands show the mothers in their lives just how much they appreciate them – or else! Considering this, and the fact that Mother’s Day is the second most popular gifting holiday in the United States following Christmas, TrendSource conducted a detailed Mother’s Day consumer insights study to determine shopping trends for this holiday that continues to be of critical importance to retailers and restaurateurs.

While the study gathered many pertinent insights, the most central were:

• Consumers clearly prefer the in-store customer experience for gift purchasing on this holiday
• Men intend to spend more dollars per gift, but women still dominate the shopping experience

In order to further delve into Mother’s Day shopping intentions, the study segmented responses based on who the respondents said they would be celebrating. Responses were grouped into three different categories:

1. Sons and daughters celebrating mothers
2. Husbands celebrating wives with children
3. Fathers and mothers celebrating daughters with children

Key results from the shopper insights study revealed that:

Brick and Mortar Wins Mother’s Day

Despite the recent showrooming trend, the Mother’s Day consumer insights study concluded that the in-store shopping experience is indeed preferred over the online shopping experience for this holiday. Both men and women indicated that they are more likely to purchase gifts in-store than online with 63% of sons citing this preference and 74% of daughters. Additionally, 82% of responding husbands plan to purchase a Mother’s Day gift for their wives in-store over alternative online options.

In-Store is Coming Up Roses!

Regardless of the strong media push by floral e-commerce, flower purchasing intentions are following the same trend as other gift categories for this holiday. Local florists are in the lead across all segments followed by grocery, with 44% of husbands planning to buy their flowers at a local florist and 38% at a grocery store. The average flower budget cited by husbands was $42, while the average budget for sons and daughters was between $38 and $45. Notably, of the sons purchasing flowers for their mothers, there was a significant spike in likelihood to purchase from 1-800-Flowers.com that was not present with female respondents (see figure below). We tossed this finding around the office here at TrendSource to get some opinions for why this might be the case, and some people theorized that the previously mentioned “strong media push” might have in fact affected this segment – purely speculation, but what do you think might account for this occurrence?

Battle of the Sexes: Men Budget More $$, but More Women Shop

The majority of both male and female respondents indicated that they plan to celebrate their mothers this year. Each of the three relational segments analyzed in this shopper insights study revealed that men intend to budget more money, but significantly more of the women respondents (94%) are participating in gift purchasing than the male respondents (65%). For example, sons indicated an overall average budget of $72 for gifts for their mothers and daughters indicated an overall average budget of $58 – this trend applied to husbands celebrating wives and parents celebrating their children as well.

Greeting Cards are Queen Bee

Greeting cards are expected to top the charts as the preferred token of tribute to mothers this Mother’s Day, followed by flowers and a meal out with family. However, fathers who indicated that they will purchase a gift for their daughters with children had ‘another gift type’ in mind that was not identified in this study. Additionally, moms celebrating their daughters, who are also mothers, indicated that spending time together during a meal out was more of a treat than flowers.

It’s the Thought That Counts

According to the respondents, high-ticket items are not the focus for gift giving this Mother’s Day. Gifts of sentiment including cards, flowers and time together dining at a restaurant, trump other categories. However, husbands who stated that jewelry was on their gift list for their wives are headed to department stores (26%) followed by Kay Jewelers (18%). Another finding of note is that men who indicated that they are treating their wives to a meal out cited a budget of $80, putting it in the lead of the top three gifts in regards to dollars budgeted.

Whatever your plans may be, we hope you have a wonderful holiday celebrating your mom!