Hershey beats Mars, Mondelēz, and Perfetti Van Melle in Amazon Halloween candy sales
The US e-commerce data analytics firm also found that Hershey was the only chocolate brand that appeared among the top five most sold chocolate brands on Amazon across the country, beating competitors including Mars, Almond Joy, and Reese’s chocolate.
“Every year, Americans generally get more involved in Halloween, and this year saw a record $4.1bn spend for Halloween candy sales alone,” said Edison Trends. Amazon US alone generated $13m worth of candy during the holiday season, according to earlier data from One Click Retail.
Online sales state by state
Jessica Cooper, content and brand marketing manager at Edison Trends, said the national data was not collected through a survey, but rather via a sample of 2.7 million Americans’ email receipts from their purchases on Amazon.
“We do not have a partnership with Amazon,” she noted. However, “we get permission from Amazon’and other retailer customers who use our mobile apps to analyze and share their anonymized and aggregated e-receipts in our research.”
As a result, candy brands were extracted from those e-receipts to generate a state-by-state comparison map to determine which brands of Halloween candy were among the most popular, Cooper added.
The report showed Hershey won the most share of e-wallet evenly across 28 US states, taking control of the East Coast and nearly the entire West Coast, except Oregon. Airheads followed across nine states, Skittles across seven states, Sour Patch Kids across three, and Starburst across two.
“We did not have enough data for states including New Mexico and South Dakota, and left those blank on the map,” she said.
Contradicting One Click Retail’s data?
ConfectioneryNews previously reported a Halloween-specific variety mix from Mars, which contains 400 pieces of candy, was the bestselling October 2017 item on Amazon based on One Click Retail data.
However, Edison Trends’ analysis did not take into account mixed bags and their contents, such as Halloween Mix or Party Mix, the company said.
“Both data sets are correct as they are two different approaches to looking at purchase volume,” Cooper said. “Our Edison Trends data for our Halloween candy sales is based on Amazon’s overall candy brand sales volume by state in October – i.e. all Hershey’s candy products purchased vs. all Skittles or all Mars candy products purchased on Amazon by state.”
“Conversely, One Click Retail’s research includes a top ten list of bestselling candy products on Amazon— i.e. an individual Mars candy product sales volume vs. another Mars or Hershey’s candy product sales volume,” she added.
