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Valentine’s Day Online Shopping Study Finds Red Rose Popularity Declining

SLI Systems Analysis of 1.2 Million Consumer Searches Across Floral Sites Reveals
Searches for Red Roses Down 40% While Blue Roses Tripled; Few Searches for Long-Stem

SAN JOSE, Calif. – February 10, 2017 – This Valentine’s Day, spouses and significant others receiving roses may get more colorful arrangements. In addition, those Valentines hoping for a dozen long-stem roses could be disappointed. SLI Systems (SLI.NZ), a global leader and provider of e-commerce solutions and services for mid-to-large-size Internet retailers and B2B sites, studied consumer search trends across top floral e-commerce sites in the U.S. and found ‘rose’ searches comprised nearly 20% of the total site searches but interest in red roses has waned, favoring an array of less traditional colors.

According to an annual Valentine’s Day survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics, U.S. consumers will spend an average $136.57 this Valentine’s, down from last year’s record-high $146.84. They are expected to spend $2 billion on flowers (35%), $4.3 billion on jewelry (given by 19% of shoppers), and $3.8 billion on an evening out (37%), among other things. Ninety percent will give a Valentine’s gift, averaging $85.21, to a significant other or spouse.

To understand shifts in consumer behavior, SLI Systems analyzed more than 1.2 million e-commerce site searches on leading floral websites taking place between Jan 6 and Feb 6, 2017 – the month leading up to Valentine’s Day. SLI also compared rose-color-specific search data during Feb 1-8, 2017 to a similar SLI Valentine’s Day gift research study conducted in 2015.

“SLI is seeing a colorful trend in Valentine’s Day rose giving. When we looked at e-commerce search data among the top five rose colors in early February 2015 compared with early February 2017, we found interest in the most traditionally romantic color ‘red’ declined 40 percent. In 2015, pink was the second-most popular color, and now it’s not even in the top five,” explained Chris Brubaker, CMO SLI Systems.

Top Five Rose Colors For February 2017:

  • Red (28%) – Decrease from 47% in 2015
  • White (21%) – Increase from 16% in 2015
  • Blue (18%) – Increase from 6% in 2015
  • Rainbow (17%)
  • Purple (16%)

Additional 2017 Valentine’s Day Flower Findings:

  • Roses Still Win in 2017 – Roses comprised 60% of searches among the top five most popular flower types – more than 3x the searches of runner up flower types: lilies (18%), tulip (8%), orchid (7%), and sunflower (7%).
  • Last-Minute Giving – The highest volume of flower searches were conducted on Monday, Feb. 6, just a week before the holiday. The 6th saw 13% more queries than Feb 2, the second-busiest day, indicating a frenzy of last-minute flower buying.
  • Cheaper Dates? – Just over 6% of those looking for roses searched for “dozen,” and only 4% searched for “long-stem,” supporting the NRF survey showing consumers plan to spend a bit less this Valentine’s Day.
  • California is For Lovers – The top five U.S. states searching most for flowers, in order, were California, New York, Texas, Illinois, and Florida. California search volume was 31% higher than New York.

About SLI Systems
SLI Systems (SLI.NZ) accelerates e-commerce for the world’s top retailers by generating more traffic, converting shoppers into buyers and maximizing order values through solutions that improve site search, navigation, mobile, merchandising, personalization, recommendations and SEO. SLI is the most chosen SaaS-based site search provider to Internet Retailer Top 1,000 retailers. The SLI Buyer Engine combines user behavior and machine learning to accurately predict what shoppers are most likely to buy, shortening the path to purchase. The SLI Commerce Console™ organizes key sales insight and tuning capabilities into one easy-to-use cloud-based console. SLI Systems operates on five continents, powering more than 600 websites and offering solutions in 20 languages. For more information, visit www.sli-systems.com.

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Media Contact:
Liza Colburn
Crescendo Communications
+1.781.562.0111
liza@crescendocc.com