Have you finished your Valentine's Day chocolates? More are on the way.
This week, US consumers are buying an estimated $318 million worth of chocolate candy, according to The Nielsen Company.
The company said that only Valentine's Day candy sales are higher. Consumers will also buy about 17 million egg coloring kits this week.
Advertising helps drive consumer spending on candy although ad spending in this area is on a downward trend. Nielsen Monitor-Plus said that $65.6 million was spent on candy advertising last year from Lent through Easter (February 25-April 8, 2007). That was actually down 6% from the $69.7 spent during the same season in 2006. This year's spending may be even lower, given that Easter Sunday falls earlier than it has since 1913.
There is a reason you see a lot of Peeps ads on TV during Easter. One-third of last year's Easter candy ad spending was placed on cable TV. Online ad spending during the season totaled $800,000, well behind TV and magazines, but ahead of newspapers.
Nielsen said that since 2004, Easter season candy ad spending has outpaced the amount spent to promote Halloween candy.
The company also said that online conversations about Easter shot up by 275% on February 6, the first day of Lent, compared to earlier that week. Nielsen collected the data by monitoring
consumer-generated content from nearly 70 million blogs between February 1 and March 11.
Consumers will spend an estimated $14.4 billion this year on food, apparel, gifts, flowers, decorations and candy to celebrate Easter, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF)-sponsored "2008 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey," conducted by BIGresearch.
The percentage of respondents who said they would buy Easter gifts online actually dipped slightly this year. Respondents said they would spend an average of $135 on Easter, close to last year's average of $135.
Learn how consumers research their holiday purchases. Read eMarketer's Online Holiday Shopping report.