Love is All Around: Valentine in Indonesia - Survey Report

Valentine has been long known as the day for love. Couples are more likely to express their love and become super romantic to their loved ones on the day. As love is a matter of taking and giving, for most cultures, lovers like to give lovely gifts such as chocolate, flowers, and else to their partner as the symbol of their tender love. Well, we agree that love should be felt and expressed in every day. However, understanding Valentine as a practice of society today’s popular culture and celebration of love put February, 14^thbecome a special day when love is definitely all around. In order to captivate the spirit of love, we conducted a survey regarding Valentine’s Day in Indonesia. We would like to explore how do Indonesian celebrate Valentine and how do they shop for it. As the trend of shopping in Valentine’s Day relatively high, understanding Indonesian consumption on the day remain significant. 255 respondents in nationwide male and female, married, dating, and single participated in the survey.

Valentine’s Day may become a special day to show the love. However, not every culture accepts it as part of their rites. Some cultures consider Valentine as foreign and different culture, so that they disallowed their people to celebrate it. However, although celebration of Valentine’s Day also remains controversy in Indonesia, our study found that 28% of Indonesian celebrates Valentine. Moreover, they also expect to receive both romantic affection and gift from their partner on Valentine.

We then asked deeper questions to our respondents who celebrate Valentine. 73% of them were planning to shop for Valentine’s Day. However, we found different pattern of shopping between men and women. As chocolate was identically associated with Valentine celebration, both men and women were planning to buy chocolate at the first place. Moreover, men were also more likely to buy flowers, while women buy clothes at the second place. At the last place, both men and women were similarly more likely to buy fashion accessories.

Today, it is super easy for people to shop anything at anywhere. Since online media become a new place for shopping, online e-commerce and online shop in social media become the choice of Indonesian who shops for Valentine. However, it seems that Indonesian were more likely to shop in supermarket since they mentioned it at the first place, and then followed by online e-commerce, online shop in social media, and gift shop at the following place.

Since shopping for Valentine’s consumes time and energy, we asked our respondents when they shop for Valentine’s gift. Interestingly, Indonesian in 20-25 years old gave us different answer to the 26-35 years old. The 20-25 years tend to shop in less than a week prior to Valentine’s Day. In other hand, the 26-35 years old tend to shop in a week prior to the day.

Although most Valentine gift was subjected to the partner, people also gave the gift to others. People also gave the gift to their best friend, family, and parents.

Another romantic moment in Valentine’s Day was the dinner. Compared to women, men were more likely to buy special dinner in Valentine. 61% men planned to buy special dine in various places. The 20-25 and 30-35 years old tend to choose cafe as their Valentine dinner venue. In other hand, the 26-29 years old tend to have their Valentine dinner in fine dining restaurant.

Surprisingly, we also found that men and women tend to have different considerations regarding the dinner venue. Men tend to consider menu, location, and venue facility as important factors. In other hand, women tend to consider the location, price, and venue before choosing their dinner venue on Valentine.

Since Valentine is a special moment, we asked how Indonesian prepares for Valentine’s Day. We then once again found different answers between men and women. Men and women were having different kind of preparation to celebrate Valentine. For men, preparing themselves for Valentine would be started by buying new clothes and get home earlier from school or work. In other hand, women preparations for Valentine were done by putting on special make up and visiting beauty salon. Regarding their overall spending for Valentine celebration, most Indonesian spends averagely IDR 100-300K.

With all due respect, we found interesting finding regarding Indonesian expectation on receiving Valentine gift. Both Indonesian who celebrate and not celebrate Valentine were similarly expecting to receive gift on the day. For those who celebrate Valentine, despite giving or not giving any gift, they ever want to receive one. Furthermore, even previously some respondents said that they do not celebrate Valentine, they still want to accept Valentine gift.

At last, we would like to understand the expected gift Indonesian would like to receive on Valentine. Interestingly, chocolate was mentioned by both men and women at the first place. However, men and women mentioned different kind of expected gift in details. Besides receiving chocolate, men also would love to receive fashion accessories, clothes, and perfume. Moreover, women would love to receive jewellery, flowers, fashion accessories, and shopping voucher as Valentine gift.

For more detail you can download XLS report at the button below (bahasa). JAKPAT report consists of 3 parts which are 1) Respondent Profile, 2) Crosstabulation for each question and 3) Raw Data. Respondent profile shows you demographic profiles ( gender,age range, location by province, and monthly spending). Cross tabulation enables you to define different demographic segment preference on each answer.