CandyRific also teamed up with Mars this year to offer four seasonal Movie Night Snack Kits created to appeal to consumers choosing to Netflix and chill at home.
Thirty-four percent of consumers intend to start holiday shopping by Labor Day, according to a survey by San Francisco-based digital experience management software company Sitecore. In addition, two in three consumers (64%) expect the upcoming holiday season to be more meaningful than in years prior, making Americans 56% more likely to be emotionally invested in the 2021 holidays. And nearly two in three (62%) Americans plan to spend more than they had before the pandemic, according to a survey on 2021 holiday shopping behaviors from Colorado Springs, Colo-based product design firm Quantum Metric.
Looking immediately ahead, Halloween promises to be a blockbuster selling occasion, not that last year was bad. In fact, candy sales were up last year during Halloween, according to Todd Scott, manager, corporate brand and editorial at the Pennsylvania-based Hershey Co.
“We started to see trends that people were going to celebrate Halloween, whether or not it was a traditional trick-or-treat experience,” Scott recounts, “and we went to our retail partners and said, ‘Look, you don’t want to pull back on Halloween just yet, because what we’re seeing is that people are going to want to preserve their traditions. They may look a little bit different than they did before, but they're still going to do it.’ It ended up being a good Halloween.”
According to Scott, the company has adapted its Halloween strategy when it comes to marketing and supply chain to meet the needs of the post-pandemic consumer. One method that the company employed last year was placing Halloween candy offerings on shelves weeks in advance, which the company is doing again this year.
“We don’t treat Halloween as a one-day holiday; Halloween is a 10-week season because people shop early, they go out, they get their Halloween candy, they bring it home, they eat it, they have to go get more,” Scott explains. “So we understood where consumers were last year and how they were feeling about the holiday itself; getting out a little bit early, and then treating it as this longer season, I think, was what really helped.”
Another Hershey strategy was to update product mixes and sell smaller-sized bags to meet increased demand for both at-home and out-of-home occasions. This year, Scott says, Hershey is expecting a “really positive” Halloween.
“One, we had success last year, and two, Halloween falls on a weekend this year, so it’s going to be a weekend of celebration rather than a single night around the country,” he observes. “So I think you’re going to see more people party.”
Manufacturers such as Hackettstown, N.J.-based Mars Wrigley have also embraced omnichannel initiatives to build bigger baskets as consumers navigate a shifting pandemic environment where they might feel like shopping in-store one day because the pandemic is “over,” but may want to avoid the store the next day due to news about another COVID surge.