The first human cases of COVID-19 were identified in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in December 2019 (Page et al. 2021). On March, 11th, 2020, Covid-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (Keith and Gharib, 2020). On the very next day, March 12th, 2020, there were over 1,500 confirmed cases in the U.S., and 41 confirmed deaths due to the Covid-19 virus in the states of California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Washington. And that was just the beginning. In the days, weeks, and months following, the U.S. case load and death count due to Covid-19 kept rising daily, and most retail businesses throughout the U.S., including florists and plant shops, shut down their operations to help curb the spread of the virus (although many garden centers and supermarkets remained open thru curbside pick-up, in-store mask mandates, and on-line shopping).
As we approach the 4-year “Remembrance Juncture”, with more than one million American deaths attributed to Covid-19, and nearly 7 million deaths worldwide (as of mid-September, 2023), many of us in the floral industry can recount tragic stories of what Covid-19 did to our families, our friends, our businesses, and associates in the floral industry. And luckily, or through the power of mankind, medical support and vaccines, or through the grace of God (or a higher power), most of us survived Covid-19. Although the Covid-19 virus and its many variants are still with us today, the lethality of the virus in the U.S. is much reduced now. And the strength of last February’s Valentine’s Day floral sales (Prince & Prince, 2023; Tighe, 2023), and floral sales from the most recent Mother’s Day holiday (Prince, 2023), signals to us that the U.S. consumer is again eager to purchase floral products (or as some would say, “eager to generate smiles!”). So at this juncture, with Covid-19 largely behind us, Prince & Prince (P&P) believes now is an opportune time to look forward and assess the future of the U.S. floral market with an updated survey of U.S. consumer floral purchasing over the 2023 season.
It is quite fortuitous that P&P conducted its last “look” (survey) of the U.S. floral market in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic (Prince & Prince, 2020). That P&P survey captured over 100 metrics on cut-flower and indoor potted plant purchasing from over 1,000 randomlyselected floral-buying households, including the following: 1) Household dollar spending on fresh cut flowers and indoor potted flowering and foliage plants and planters, 2) Types of fresh cut flowers and indoor potted plants purchased, 3) Holidays, events, and occasions of floral purchasing (including “everyday” floral purchases), 4) Identified floral businesses where those floral purchases were made (businesses categorized into eight key floral channels, including the On-Line/Internet), and a detailed consume evaluation of those floral channels (30 attributes of customer service performance, experiences with the floral products purchased, and overall customer satisfaction), and 5) Nine key demographic measurements of the floral-buying household, including age, household income, educational attainment, urbanization level of market, U.S. region, and household composition (e.g. children, teenagers, and retirees within the household, and single-person households).
With the proposed 2023 survey update, P&P has the ability to track all the changes that have occurred in these consumer floral-purchasing metrics since the pandemic, in effect, establishing “trend lines” for each metric prior to and after the pandemic. Collectively, these updated trend lines, along with historical survey trend lines over seven prior P&P surveys (way back to 1996), assist P&P in defining both the current and future floral market. In addition, the potted plant portion of the new P&P floral research can update the recent 2021 AFE consumer research relative to the “pandemic plant-buying boom” (Forney, 2022) to better identify the new consumers gained and to gauge the level of their plant-purchasing now, post-pandemic (e.g. increase, decrease, or no change in potted plant purchasing). Thus, P&P believes that a review of the P&P consumer floral research over the past 20 years, and a 2023 update can be beneficial in defining where the U.S. floral market is now, and where it is headed. The motto of the P&P U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey is the following: “Understanding where we have been, Knowing where we are now, and Projecting where we are going!”
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For more information:
Tom Prince
Floral Market Research
Email: [email protected]
www.FloralMarketResearch.com