🎶 Trick or treat, Excel Sheets, give us data that’s complete. If you don’t, we should share, we can install helpful software! 🎶
What Does Halloween Data Reveal?
Halloween is chock(olate)-full of data! As one of the more affordable end-of-year celebrations, sales for this holiday are a good indicator of how retailers will perform in the holidays following it, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. By tracking data in Halloween decoration sales, costume purchases, and candy consumption, we can spot trends and make economic forecasts. Strong sales are the sign of a healthy economy.
And if we narrow the parameters of data, we can focus the lens on consumer behavior and reveal pop culture trends too! Costume selections alone can tell you which superheroes and TV shows are “cool” and which fads have passed. You can learn a lot when you follow the money – that’s why data analytics is so critical to FP&A!
According to the National Retail Federation, American consumers plan to spend an average of $102.74 on costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards this year. That’s $10 more than they planned to spend last year. Add $50 and that’s what a household with children is estimated to spend on Halloween festivities. Spooky is expensive!
Not only are adults, parents, and kids wearing costumes… but people are dressing their pets now too! One in five people intend to dress their pets in costume this year.
With buyer confidence trending upwards, we can assume that wallets will flex for the other upcoming holidays as well. Just think of all the pretty (and insightful) dashboards and visualizations you can make with holiday data!
Data is all around us. Even something as whimsical as Halloween presents us with the opportunity to utilize data analytics to unearth valuable information. This holiday alone gives us a glimpse into our economic landscape, consumer behavior, and pop culture trends. So, pick your costumes and your candy carefully!
