Valentine's Day: Low Expectations, Free Poetry

Less than one in five Americans is expecting a romantic Valentine's day, according to research by QuestionPro. Meanwhile, NetRatings says half of Australians are planning to buy a Valentine's gift, and Hitwise finds that Brits are opting for Tesco flowers, backed up by romantic poetry downloaded for free.

According to Hitwise in the UK, Tesco is the big winner this Valentine's day. Visits to Flowers and Gifts sites increased by 28% last week, with Tesco Flowers taking the top spot. Its market share increased eight times in the past four weeks, thanks to an 'aggressive pricing strategy'. However, Tesco has not managed to crush the competition completely: 30% of searches for 'Tesco Flowers' send visitors to sites other than Tesco.

Hitwise also found that Valentine's Day related searches were not totally commercial. Searches for 'valentine poems' surpassed other search terms that included the keywords 'valentine' or 'valentines' last week. The largest volume of visits from 'valentine poems' searches went to www.poemsforfree.co.uk, whose share of UK Internet visits doubled last week.

In contrast to the poetry-loving Brits, 81% of Americans expect Valentine's day to be only moderately romantic, or not romantic at all, according to QuestionPro's annual survey of 1,400 men and women. For the second year in a row, the most popular gifts, selected by more than 51% of female respondents, were a romantic dinner and to hear 'I love you'. The least popular gift wish was lingerie, with just 1.55% of votes.

In Australia, the Nielsen//NetRatings' Online Retail Monitor found that 48% of Australian Internet users intend to make a Valentine's Day purchase. Of these, 79% intend to buy exclusively offline, with 2% buying exclusively online, and 19% combining the two. Growth in online Valentine's spend is mainly driven by men: 13% of Australian male Internet users expect to spend more this year than last, compared with just 7% of women.

The companies are online at www.questionpro.com , www.hitwise.co.uk , and www.netratings.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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