Trick or Treat Yourself: A Bite of Halloween

Halloween is a highly anticipated event for millions of people worldwide, and the UK has fully embraced the celebration with parties, fright nights, and traditional trick-or-treating. Halloween sales in the UK have steadily increased by approximately 200% over the past decade, and are expected to continue to rise in 2023.

Using our Panoramic Pricing data, we have looked at the online Halloween ranges of Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Asda. How large are their ranges, what deals are available, and how have they adhered to HFSS regulations?

Results

Firstly, we can see reasonable consistency between the sizes of the website ranges across the retailers: Asda - 65 products, Sainsbury’s - 62 products, Morrisons - 53 products & and Tesco - 50 products.

These ranges show that each retailer is selling the usual fun size and multipack products but also selling a number of traditional “Halloween specific” products such as Skull lollipops, Ghost Mallows, Sour Skeletons and Pumpkin Chocolates, as shown below.

Looking at membership promotions (Tesco Clubcard, Sainsbury’s Nectar, Asda Rewards & Morrisons More Card) vs non-membership promotions against the total Halloween Sweet range, we can see a mix of strategies across the four retailers.

Tesco?focuses entirely on membership promotions, with 50% of the range (25 products) on a Clubcard offer.?Sainsbury’s, like Tesco, are heavily pushing their promotions towards their members with 20 products (32% of range) on a Nectar Card offer and just one product (1% of their range) on a standard offer.

Unlike the above two retailers,?Asda?and?Morrisons?have adopted a different strategy, splitting their promotions between members and standard consumers. Asda have 15 non-membership offers (23% of their range) alongside 11 membership offers (17% of their range), and Morrisons have 17 non-membership offers (32% of their range) alongside nine membership offers (17% of their range).

Although this trend aligns with what we have seen within FMCG regarding membership promotions, it is highly probable that HFSS regulations are also driving promotional strategy with retailers restricted in terms of BOGOF and multi-buy offers.

Conclusion

Even though retailers do not have the free reign they once had to entice consumers with Halloween offers, they still see this event as a great sales opportunity and a worthwhile use of floor space.

Although, due to HFSS regulations, in-store displays are not the wall of promotions they once were, supermarkets are still determined to take advantage of this seasonal selling opportunity. They can drive volume sales through their membership offers and traditional visual displays.?

If you're in need of pricing, promotion and range analysis contact ESA Retail - [email protected]