At first, garden centers were closed in many areas, then when they opened, consumers who were spending all of their time locked up at their homes rushed to buy plants to make their homes more enjoyable and to grow their own food. Studies done in the U.S. indicated 15-20,000,000 new consumers to gardening, an increase of at least 10%. Of particular interest, many of these were millennials, the future of our industry.
The question is, will they buy again? Trying to understand this, Media Concept US member MasterTag did cooperative research with the Home Garden Panel and asked over five hundred representative consumers their thoughts.
Top Level Insights Include:
• 95% of respondents are likely to purchase again in 2021
• 85% of respondents plan to garden more or the same in 2021
As confirmation of this, 72% had continued to buy plants through the summer.
Of course, to keep these new plant consumers into the future, they must be successful with gardening. The top answers for, “What would improve your gardening experience?”: Wanting more information. This is particularly high among the new millennial gardeners.
This is a good reminder that selling a great quality plant is important, but making sure the consumer knows how to be successful with it is also critical.
The challenge is now to all growers and the entire industry to prepare in the right way for 2021.