Valentine's Day Statistics

Valentine's Day, the season of love, romance, and more love. For many, Valentine's Day is a mad rush act of booking the perfect restaurant, ordering the perfect arrangement of jaunty roses, and wrapping that perfect, extravagant Valentine gift. While for some, the season of hearts passes by quietly, unceremoniously, just like any other day.

Valentine's Day has often been criticized as just an excuse for consumerism, an opportunity for businesses. Consequently, cynics everywhere have also unfairly stained the well-meaning tradition of sending Valentine cards. As if it is Hallmark's fault that people are only sending cards perfunctorily, without thought at all, but just to get over the holiday. Indeed, Valentine's Day is the second largest card-exchanging holiday next to Christmas, making Hallmark the unmistakable industry leader.

Other Valentine's Day statistics are:

-85% of all Valentine cards are bought by women.

-73% of flowers are bought by men, and only 27% are by women.

-Chocolate and candy sales reach profits of $1,011 billion during Valentines.

-Approximately one in four Americans do not celebrate the holiday at all. In addition, 15% of American women (and even men) send flowers to themselves on Valentine's Day.

-There is no shortage of places where you can buy flowers for your valentine: there were 26,400 florists nationwide, employing 123,600 persons, in 1995. 

-2005 Valentine's Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey,  found the average consumer will spend $97.27 on Valentine's Day, down slightly from $99.24 last year.

-BUT 61.8 percent of consumers plan on celebrating the holiday, which is up from 59.8 percent one year ago.

-In all, 2005 Valentine's Day spending was forecasted to reach $13.19 billion.