As the room full of software engineers in our office laments the contrived commercialism of Valentine’s Day (largely because they’re single), we wanted to get a sense of what real people would be doing today. Over the past week, we surveyed a few thousand US consumers over age 18 to see whether they would be observing Cupid’s big day. Here’s what we found:
First, we asked whether people would be buying a gift for that someone special this year. According to the 3,411 people we asked, 42% of consumers are Very Likely to buy a gift for someone, while 15% said Somewhat Likely.
The people most likely to buy gifts are (shocker) married men, between the ages of 30 and 44. People under age 24 and over age 65 are the least likely. Interestingly, women who say they are “Somewhat Taller” than average are 38% MORE likely to buy gifts than women of shorter or average height.
Then we asked whether people planned to eat out for Valentine’s Day. The numbers are appreciably smaller than the people who plan to buy gifts. Here, we see that of the 3,461 people we asked, 15% are Very Likely to dine out, while a slightly larger group at 16% said Somewhat Likely.
As expected, the demographic splits here are similar to the gift-buyers with a few exceptions. The age group most likely to dine out are those between 25 and 29. This struck us as counter-intuitive because people who are married with school-aged children are 36% more likely to dine out than those who are married WITHOUT kids.
So, it looks like Hallmark will make out better selling gifts than the restaurant industry will make out overall. But it should apparently be a banner night for the Babysitting Industry.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.
