On Sunday, May 14, 2023, America celebrates Mother’s Day. And flowers are often seen as the perfect gift to express honor, gratitude, and love for mom on this special day. Prince & Prince, Inc. (P&P), a leader in market research focused on the floral and green plant industries, has released a projection for the total number of U.S. households that will celebrate “Mom” and make floral purchases for this Mother’s Day 2023. P&P projects 59 million U.S. households (58.99 million) will make one or more fresh floral purchases to celebrate Mother’s Day 2023, with a total retail value of household floral spending of $5.2 billion dollars.
Special Note: This Prince & Prince (P&P) floral market report utilizes the latest U.S. household projections from the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University. JCHS utilizes Census data and makes periodic adjustments for factors that affect household formation (McCue, 2023).
This floral value includes all consumer fresh floral product purchases, including fresh cut flowers, fresh floral arrangements, bouquets, cut flower bunches, single stems, and corsages, and also indoor fresh potted flowering and foliage plants & planters, and any associated delivery/ service fees. This projected market value for Mother’s Day 2023 is just slightly higher than last year’s projection of $5.1 billion, largely due to recently revised U.S. household estimates by the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard University (McCue, 2023). Over the past few years, there has been a surge in the growth of households in the U.S. driven by a sharp turnaround in growth among younger households (Figure 1). Prior JCHS projections (2011 to 2016) had household growth pegged at around 1.2 million additional households annually. Now, the latest updates (2016 to 2021) peg that annual growth rate at around 2.2 million households, an additional annual growth of 1 million households, largely among those under the age of 45.
Figure 1. The Recent Surge in Household Growth Has Been Driven By A Sharp Turnaround in Growth By Younger Households
And since floral-buying households under the age of 45 have a slightly higher “incidence of floral purchase” for Mother’s Day compared to older-aged households (64% vs. 58%; Prince & Prince, 2020), the floral market value projection for Mother’s Day expands. The growth effect is synergistic, as the consumer segment that is expanding in numbers also has a slightly higher predilection for purchasing floral products for Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is the largest “floral holiday” for the U.S. floral industry in terms of the total consumer dollars spent on floral products when compared to other holidays, events, and occasions throughout the year. P&P project that each floral-purchasing household that buys floral for Mother’s Day will spend about $88, on average, on floral products on this day, including all household members that make a floral purchase, with
associated delivery/ service fees included.
Although the P&P floral market dollar projection for Mother’s Day 2023 is higher than any previous P&P Mother’s Day projection, the “incidence of floral purchase” for Mother’s Day 2023 (the projected percentage of floral-buying households that make a floral purchase for Mother’s Day) is actually slightly lower than in 2022. Figure 2 shows the long-term projected trend in “incidence of household floral purchase” for Mother’s Day (best-fit quadratic function) across the purchasing data of four P&P national tracking surveys from the year 2000 to 2019 (over 4,000 data points).
Figure 2. The Incidence of Household Floral Purchase Peaked Around
2007, and Then Declined Slightly Through 2019.
The P&P survey trend line in Figure 2 indicates that the U.S. household incidence of floral purchase for Mother’s Day peaked around 2007 at about 63% of floral-buying households and has been on a slight annual decline since that time period. However, this small decline in the annual household floral-purchase incidence for Mother’s Day is offset by the seemingly ever-increasing number of households in the U.S., which positively impacts the overall expansion of the U.S. floral market over the past decade (the total number of households that make at least one floral purchase annually). Looking forward to the next decade, however, the U.S. floral industry likely needs to confront the overall declining trend in household floral-purchase incidence for Mother’s Day. The proposed 2023 P&P survey update will identify if the past declining trend in the household incidence of floral purchasing for Mother’s Day continues into the future or if the past declining trend is abated. The proposed floral survey update also will assist P&P in making more reliable floral-market predictions for the entire floral industry.
Literature cited
Dillman, D.A., Smyth, J.D. and Christian, L.M. (2014).
Internet, Phone, Mail, and Mixed- Mode Surveys (Fourth Edition). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
McCue, D. (2023). The Surge in Household Growth and What It Suggests About the Future of Housing Demand. Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2022). Historical Consumer Floral Purchasing Trends for Mother’s Day: An Age Group Perspective. (P&P Market Report). Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc.
Prince, T.L. and Prince, T.A. (2020). The 2019 Prince & Prince U.S. Consumer Floral Tracking Survey (On-Site Seminar with Q&A). Columbus, OH: Prince & Prince, Inc.
Prince, T.L., Tayama, H.K., and Grabner Jr., J.R. (1991). Description of Florists’ Cognitive Structure and Perceived Performance of Supplier Services Through Second- Order Factor Analysis. J. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 116(1):161-165.
