Marketers Stuck On Mother's Day Traditions As Consumers Search For Experiences

Shoppers who are unsure what they want to give mom for Mother’s Day typically search in Amazon, Bing, and Google on keyword terms such as “mothers day.” “mothers day gifts,” “mothers day gift ideas,” and “gifts for mom.”

Kantar’s analysts analyzed 22 Mother’s Day terms from May 1 through 7, 2019, looking for additional opportunities to help marketers help consumers make up their minds. Consumers, mostly, in the past searched for flowers, chocolate-covered strawberries, gift baskets and jewelry for Mother’s Day gifts. Now several reports suggest consumers are looking for an experience or personalized gifts, rather than the typical gifts such as flowers, jewelry or clothing.

Don’t misread the data. Flowers and food are still in high demand, according to the types of keyword bids marketers make and the types of budgets allocated and spent.  

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Within product listing ads, FTD-owned ProFlowers and Shari’s Berries dominated — collectively accounting for nearly 44% of all clicks on 22 of the Mother’s Day keywords —  much more than 1 800 Flowers and Harry & David. Collectively, they generated about 11% of product-listing ad clicks on Mother’s Day keywords.

Personalized gifts were also reflected in paid-search advertising. Personalization Mall led in the top position for text ad clicks with 24.3% click share. The company also took the No. 3 spot for product-listing ad clicks, with 10.9% click share.

Amazon ranked No. 2 in text ad clicks, with 14.9% click share. Walmart ranked No. 4 in text ad clicks, with 6.1% click share. All were trying to garner a piece of the millions spent during the week leading up to Mother’s Day.

In fact, U.S. consumers spent more than $625 million during that week, according to Shopify.

IBM also released Mother’s Day data suggesting that consumers are spending more on mom. Total retail spending rose .77%, according to IBM’s retail analyst Dr. Michael Haydock.

IBM’s data, however, suggests cooler spring temperatures drove down the demand for apparel by 2.3% in physical stores, in exchange for creating a more positive experience for mom.

IBM estimates consumers will spend 4.6% more to take mom to a restaurant this year, compared with a year ago. Consumers will spend $28.41 billion this May in restaurants, up from $27.17 billion in 2018.

Fine jewelry spending fell, and is projected to reach $3.13 billion, down from $3.26 billion in 2018.

IBM’s 2019 estimates come from a combination of technology — neural networks and deep-learning systems—along with 27 years of retail sales data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in addition to key economic data, such as the unemployment rate, personal disposable income, new home sales, the VIX indicator of market volatility, and U.S. Treasury yield curves. 

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