UK Mothers Day Preview

In the UK, Mother’s Day falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent. An early Easter this year therefore means an early Mother’s Day: on Sunday, March 6.

In this report, FBIC Global Retail & Technology rounds up some key retail numbers on the occasion, and reviews our store tours undertaken ahead of Mother’s Day 2016.

How Much Is Mother’s Day Worth?

UK consumers will spend around £1.4 billion on Mother’s Day cards, flowers, gifts and services this year, we estimate. Our figures factor in average per-person spending reported in multiple consumer surveys from companies such as Rakuten, Marks & Spencer and Voucherbox. The total includes nonretail spending such as dining out and event tickets.

The most popular gift categories are flowers (bought by 25% of consumers), chocolates (bought by 15%), greetings cards (12%) and perfume (11%), according to a 2016 survey by Voucherbox.

Brits will spend around £255 million on flowers for Mother’s Day this year, we estimate from data from the British Retail Consortium. And they spend around £50 million on greetings cards each Mother’s Day, according to the Greeting Card Association. This is around 25% more than the £40 million spent at Valentine’s Day.

There is a similar overall uplift relative to Valentines’ Day: on average, British men each spent one-quarter more on gifts for Mother’s Day than for Valentine’s Day in 2015, according to a Marks & Spencer survey.

Mother’s Day remains a much bigger retail event than Fathers’ Day: per-person spending levels for Mother’s Day are around three times those for Fathers’ Day in the UK, according to Rakuten.

FBIC’s Store Visits

The FBIC Global Retail & Technology team has been out to London stores to review the Mother’s Day offerings from big-name retailers.

Our Three Favorite Promotions

As with all these kinds of seasonal events, Mother’s Day provides an opportunity to create in-store spectacle and to host in-store events; in turn, these drive footfall. Here are our three favourite uses of Mother’s Day as a marketing opportunity:

First, Debenhams on Oxford Street featured its Flower Shop, which it first launched at Valentine’s. At the entrance to the store, this adds interest and is likely to win impulse buys as shoppers head for the beauty hall.

Our second top in-store opportunity was at Selfridges: the upmarket department store took the opportunity to promote its Moët & Chandon personalized champagne service. This service was launched in December 2015 and allows users to create personalized labels for mini bottles of Moët that feature photos taken in an adjacent photo booth.

Finally, athleisure brand Sweaty Betty was offering complimentary Mother’s and Daughter’s Power Yoga in its UK stores on Mother’s Day; these classes include a good bag for each attendee, with a £15 voucher code.

What Are Major Retailers Doing?

Our store visits confirmed that Mother’s Day is focused on gifts that are smaller ticket (such as chocolates) or modest in size (beauty giftsets, fashion accessories, small homewares, champagne): Mother’s Day remains an event for discrete, tasteful gifting of token presents, not for big, extravagant gifts.

John Lewis consistently has a strong gifting offer tailored to the season, and ahead of Mother’s Day its Oxford Street store offered a selection of premium gifts that spanned confectionery to candles.

Similarly, food, flowers and small homewares were featured at Marks & Spencer (M&S).

In M&S’s Fashion division, accessories such as bags and scarves were the focus. When we visited, M&S was also using the opportunity to promote its offer of 25% off selected clothing and nightwear.

Debenhams used the opportunity to run special price promotions: online, it featured 20% off selected watches, jewelry and handbags. It also offered £10 off selected fragrances and skincare, and £5 off a spend of £25 or more on flowers.

In-store, the beauty halls of Debenhams and House of Fraser highlighted beauty sets as suitable Mother’s Day gifts.

BHS, which has only recently launched food halls in its stores, used the opportunity to promote chocolates, wine and flowers. In-store merchandising was appealing, although some of the featured items—such as Cadbury and Thorntons chocolates—were “supermarket” products.

Aldi and Lidl

Among the grocery discounters Aldi went big on Mother’s Day this year, offering a greater range of products than rival Lidl. Both promoted their ranges of floral bouquets, as well as suitable products from their regular food offeringx, such as wines and chocolates.

Aldi launched Mother’s Day products in its nonfood Special Buys range on February 21, with handbags, clutchbags, gloves, DAB radios and other gift items such as gardening sets, mugs, scarves and clocks. Mother’s Day cards were priced from 79 pence. The relatively early timing will have given Aldi sufficient time to clear any excess stock in the event of subdued demand.

Discounter rival Lidl was pushing its floral bouquets from £3 and Belgian chocolate truffles at £1.99. Lidl was more focused than Aldi on food and flowers—a theme that was familiar from previous seasonal events such as Valentine’s Day. Other than bouquets and its existing women’s fragrance (“Suddenly Madame Glamour”), Lidl was not seen to offer any nonfood special deals for Mother’s day this year.

Key Takeaways

• At around £1.4 billion in total value across retail and services, Mother’s Day is a sizeable event: it is bigger in value than Valentine’s Day, for instance. Given this, retailers should be putting maximum effort into instore merchandizing, events and promotions.
• Several major retailers are seizing the opportunities: BHS is leveraging its new capabilities in food and drink, and Aldi this year pushed into Mother’s day gift categories more than rival Lidl.
• As with other seasonal events, Mother’s Day provides the opportunity to add interest in-store, and so drive footfall. Debenhams, with its flower shop, and Sweaty Betty, with in-store yoga classes, are among those leading innovation.
• Competitors should consider upping their game in terms of in-store experiences and events to win share of wallet for Mother’s Day 2017, and for other seasonal shopping occasions.