Gift Message Sentiment Trends: Love and Kindness Lead

Two feelings did nearly all the work in gifting this week. Notes full of love turned up on 36% of gifts, and kind, caring notes followed right behind at 34%. Together they covered most of what people sent.

The moments behind those numbers are ordinary and lovely. Mothers are sending daughters birthday jewelry with a few lines of advice attached. Partners separated by distance are sending matching pieces they can both wear. Grandparents are sending small keepsakes for no occasion at all, which is its own kind of occasion.

Notes full of love landed on more than a third of all gifts this week.

Encouragement gifting is on a four-week climb

Underneath the celebration, a quieter pattern keeps growing. Shoppers cheering someone on have increased for a fourth week running. These are the gifts sent to someone in a hard stretch, not to mark a date on a calendar.

In the United States, get-well gifts and gifts of comfort both held their place in the week's mix. That matters for merchants who think of gifting as a holiday business. Candles, books, teas and hampers are quietly doing work that has nothing to do with a festival.

Birthday gifting still led everything at 40% of the week, and just-because gifts held close to a quarter. But the fastest-moving tone is the supportive one, and it barely touches the calendar at all.

Most of the feeling travelled abroad

Nearly six in ten gifts this week came from somewhere other than the United States. The Emirates were a bright spot in that mix, where shoppers sent bracelets and earrings with notes written in Arabic. Spanish, Dutch, Turkish, Italian and Swedish all showed up too.

The occasions shifted by place. In Britain, roughly two of every three gifts were for a birthday. Australia split its week between birthdays and gifts for new parents. South African shoppers leaned toward gifts with no occasion attached, which is a very different shopping trip from a birthday rush.

Gift boxes, cards, wrap, books and necklaces were the most gifted things across all of it. The feeling was consistent everywhere; the packaging varied.

What this means for merchants

When love and kindness are carrying most of gifting, the message field is the product. Shoppers reaching for a necklace or a hamper want somewhere to put the sentence they have been rehearsing, and the easiest place to offer that is the moment they fall for the item, not three clicks later.

With the majority of gifting arriving from outside America, translated gift options stop being a nice extra. A shopper writing in Arabic or Dutch should see the gifting flow in their own language. Diwali and Singles' Day both land in six weeks, so that is worth sorting now.