Spring Forecast: Sales to Spike Upward

How much will homeowners spend on lawn and garden in 2017? There’s good news for brand marketers in a new report called “The Green Scene 2017” from research firm Field Agent.Overall, 62% of the more than 1,500 respondents surveyed for the report plan to spend more on lawn and garden supplies and equipment this spring than in 2016, while another 32% plan to spend about the same amount. The most common categories were plants, flowers and seed (91%), fertilizer (84%), mulch/rock/soil (81%) and weed killer (79%).“I was struck by how many people said they were planning to spend more this year than last,” says Chris Medenwald, marketing manager. “This is more than just sampling or survey idiosyncrasies.”Respondents plan to make 65% of purchases in home improvement centers and more than 90% of them in-store rather than online. Most figured on hitting either two or three stores along the way.“It’s worth mentioning that while some product categories have excelled in terms of online shopping and spending, lawn and garden has not jumped on that buzz right now,” Medenwald adds. That did not surprise him given how tangible so many lawn and garden items are, which means people want to handle them. “A lot of people are just enthusiastic about the coming-of-spring and their annual trip,” he says. “It’s a primordial shopping opportunity.”Price, Quality, Personal Recs – and ‘Web-rooming’The homeowners indicated price (47%) and quality (28%) are the most important factors in making their purchases, and the top influencers for such purchases includes advice from a family member or friend (61%), online product reviews (51%) and store employee feedback (44%), while social media (17%) and smartphone mobile applications (12%) have far less frequent impact, the report found.“I was surprised that smartphone apps were all the way down there at the bottom,” Medenwald says. “Store employees and family & friends are still the primary reasons. Webrooming is still important, with more than half saying they read reviews online, but relatively few actually purchase items via e-commerce."An open-ended question about what they most dislike about lawn and garden shopping drew responses about the lack of sale items, the challenge in finding the exact product they wanted and the smell and difficulty of transporting fertilizer. What did respondents most like? Answers ranged from finding a good deal, to the experience of creating something or fixing a problem, to the pleasant smells and excitement of adding new plants and flowers.Most of those responses did not surprise Medenwald, who adds that people often complain they’re confused by all the different options in any given product category and lack patience with employees who aren’t well informed.“The fact that so many people said they dislike the smell is interesting because there’s no priming for that question; plus many people talked about how difficult it is transport things by car or back to their home,” he says. “The bag breaks and the vehicle gets dirty or smelly. It means there may be a market for delivery.”Top Activities Nationally and RegionallyMowing (84%), weed trimming or pulling (80%), planting flowers or plants (70%) and weed killing (69%) were the most common likely activities cited among the survey respondents, who were 59% female and 83% between the ages of 25 and 54.Broken down by region, mulching was far more commonly cited in the Northeast and Southeast (117% and 114% of the national average, respectively) than the Northwest (64%). Planting or laying grass was more common in the Northeast (117%) than the Southwest (83%), while the Southwest over-indexed for fertilizing (112%), irrigating or watering (120%) and killing insects (124%), the latter of which was less common in the Northwest (83%).A total of 85% of respondents plan to do their own lawn and garden work, primarily, while 11% plan to hire services. Their top objectives are to make their lawns and gardens healthy (30%) and welcoming (26%) more so than boosting curb appeal (20%). Medenwald expressed surprise that curb appeal did not top the list.Plants, flowers and seed topped the largest predicted category purchases at $114.50 on average, followed by mulch, rock and soil ($103.08), and irrigation and watering ($86.67). The most significant regional deviations were spending on insect killer (120% of the average) and irrigation/watering (76%) in the Southeast, grass/grass feed (77%) in the Midwest, plants/flowers/seed (120%) in the Southwest, and lawn fertilizer (78%) in the Northwest (see chart).Most of the regional differences make sense after accounting for climate and topography, Medenwald says, but the figures are nonetheless noteworthy for retailers, when deciding whether to stock eight of 16 brands of weed killer in a given area, for example. “Even a 10% difference in these lawn and garden activities, in the amount people plan to spend, can be pretty important,” he says.The full “Green Scene 2017” report can be downloaded here.

Spring Forecast: Sales to Spike Upward

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