Halloween sales soften, but not too scary
Even though Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, a National Retail Federation consumer survey projects spending will decline compared to last year.
Halloween did fall on a Friday in 2014, but Saturday night is viewed as the optimal date to drive spending as it allows for heightened levels of participation in various activities. An estimated 157 million people plan to celebrate Halloween this year and 68 million will don some type of costume, according to NRF’s survey. Average spending per person is projected to be $74 compared, to $77 last year. Total Halloween spending is projected to reach $6.9 billion.
Consumers celebrating Halloween plan to spend an average of $27 on costumes for the whole family, and a total of $2.5 billion on store-bought, homemade, large and small costumes. Those celebrating will spend the most on adult costumes ($1.2 billion), and will spend a total of $950 million on children’s costumes and $350 million on fashionable and fun costumes for pets. In addition to the millions of Americans who plan to dress up, another 20 million with dress up their pets.
Nine in 10 (93.7%) Halloween shoppers will buy candy, spending a total of $2.1 billion, and an additional 33.5% will buy greeting cards, spending a total of $330 million. Two in five celebrants (44.8%) plan to decorate their home or yard. The average person planning to buy decorations will spend $20.34 with total spending expected to reach $1.9 billion.
According to NRF, more consumers have decided to head to stores or shop online early to pick out costumes and decorations. More than one-third of consumers (34.1%) will start their Halloween shopping before the first of October, up slightly from 32.1% last year, while 40.9% will get started in the first half of the month and one-quarter of celebrants will wait for the final weeks of October.
Similar to past years, the majority of consumers will find inspiration for their costumes online (31.4%) or will head to costume shops and retail stores (26.8%) before they make a final decision. Pinterest continues to grow in popularity among those looking for costume inspiration (13.3%), as this year’s percentage is nearly double the amount who used the site for inspiration just three years ago (7.1%). Millennials remain the drivers of Pinterest traffic around Halloween though with 24.9% of 18-24 year olds and 23.7% of 25-34 year olds using the site for costume inspiration.
The survey of 6,754 consumers was conducted for NRF by Prosper Insights & Analytics Sept. 1-8.