The Business of Love: What Valentine’s Week Reveals About Pricing Power
Valentine’s week looks soft on the surface. Underneath, it is a brutal stress test of the modern B2C stack: attention, conversion, fulfilment, and reputation.
India’s Valentine’s economy is no longer a niche, urban fad. It is a measurable consumption event, estimated at ₹28,500 crore in 2025, cutting across gifts, dining, travel, jewellery, and e-commerce. For consumer brands, the real test is not demand. It is whether they can convert a short demand spike into profitable growth without discounting away their brand and margins.
How the “festival of love” creates demand
Valentine’s week works because it compresses intent into a narrow window. People are not shopping leisurely. They are shopping with a deadline and an emotion. That changes willingness to pay, and it changes what “good service” means.
Three mechanics drive the spike.
First, urgency makes convenience worth paying for. That is why quick commerce becomes disproportionately important. At peak on Feb 14, Swiggy Instamart reported 581 chocolate orders per minute and 324 rose orders per minute, and said this represented roughly 5x order growth versus a regular Friday.
Second, attention becomes scarce and expensive. Brands flood feeds with offers, creators flood feeds with content, and the ad auction gets tighter. A Qoruz estimate suggests brand spending on Valentine’s influencer collaborations grew 40 to 45% annually from 2023 to 2026, rising from ₹20 to ₹25 crore in 2023 to a projected ₹60 to ₹75 crore in 2026.
Third, engagement is not a straight line. Social engagement rose from 102 million in 2023 to 215 million in 2024, then moderated to 180 million in 2025. That matters because when engagement gets harder to sustain, brands often compensate by spending more for the same outcomes, which hits margins.
Where the ₹28,500 crore actually goes
Most people imagine Valentine’s as roses and chocolates. In reality, the profit pools sit across products, experiences, and intermediaries.
Here are the main spend “baskets” you should think in:
Gifts and premium goods: jewellery, watches, premium beauty, accessories, curated hampers.
Low-ticket, high-frequency items: flowers, chocolates, cakes, greeting cards, small add-ons that spike in volume.
Experiences: dinner dates, staycations, short trips, events, spa packages, cinema and “date activities.”
Tech gifting: phones, smartwatches, earbuds, tablets, and small electronics that are easy to justify as “useful gifts.”
The experiences bucket is where pricing power is often cleanest, because inventory is fixed. You cannot manufacture extra hotel rooms or tables on Feb 14. That shows up in real demand data: an Economic Times report noted Valentine’s hotel bookings jumping up to 175%.
The mini-festive season effect
Valentine’s has quietly become a “mini festive season” for B2C, especially after Diwali and New Year. What makes it different from Diwali is not demand. It is unit economics.
E-commerce and quick commerce can show impressive top-line momentum around the season. A Business Standard report cited Valentine’s-period GMV growth of 24% year on year and nearly 10 million gifting items bought in the run-up to Valentine’s Day 2025.
But unlike a typical long festive season, this is a short spike. When your window is a week, you do not have the luxury of learning cycles. Brands often “buy” scale through discounts and advertising, then discover the margin damage only after the season ends.
The margin stack: why GMV is not the win
Valentine’s week is a perfect example of why headline demand is the wrong KPI.
A simple way to model the “business of love” is a margin stack:
Headline GMV rises (for some platforms, +24% YoY).
Subtract discounts and promos (realised price often falls even when volumes rise).
Subtract attention costs (influencer collaborations alone are projected at ₹60 to ₹75 crore in 2026, and that’s before performance ads).
Subtract fulfilment costs (peaks like 581 chocolate orders per minute stress inventory, packing, riders, and customer support).
What’s left is contribution margin, which is where the “winner” actually shows up.
This is why Valentine’s week produces two kinds of winners:
Businesses with pricing power that can premiumise and lift AOV without heavy discounting.
Businesses with distribution power that capture urgent demand because they control discovery or delivery.
And two kinds of losers:
Brands that achieve a GMV spike but pay for it through discounting and CAC.
Brands that meet targets but damage trust through late deliveries, substitutions, or quality issues in a week where disappointment is reputationally expensive.
The pricing power test (what “winning” really looks like)
Pricing power is not “charging more.” It is charging more without losing your customer, and without your costs rising faster than revenue.
In practice, pricing power during Valentine’s week looks like:
Higher AOV without discounts doing the heavy lifting, achieved through bundling, limited editions, premium packaging, and curated gifting.
Stable margins despite higher marketing intensity, because the brand can convert intent efficiently.
High fulfilment reliability, because a perfect delivery experience is part of what consumers are paying for.
Weak pricing power looks like the opposite: volumes rise, but realised price falls, marketing spend jumps, and contribution margin gets squeezed.
What to watch (so you can judge who actually won)
If you want this newsletter to feel “research-led,” this section is your sharpest edge. Use it as your scorecard after Feb 14:
Promo intensity: Were discounts heavier than last year, or did AOV rise through mix?
Ad efficiency: Did the brand pay more for the same conversion, especially as influencer spend rises into the ₹60 to ₹75 crore band?
Fulfilment quality: Did cancellations, substitutions, and returns rise during peak-load days (the kind that produce 500+ orders per minute in single categories)?
Experience pricing power: Did hotels and restaurants sustain higher prices, supported by booking surges (up to 175%) without visible customer backlash?
Repeat behaviour: Did Feb buyers come back in March, or was this purely one-off event spend?
A test of creativity, and discipline
Valentine’s week is a rare moment where consumers are willing to pay for meaning, not just utility. That should be a gift for brands. But it comes with a catch. The week is short, the competition is loud, and the cost of attention is rising.
In a ₹28,500 crore market, the winners will not be the loudest brands. They will be the ones that pass the pricing power test while keeping fulfilment tight and reputations intact.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer/solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Views expressed are based on publicly available information as on the date of publication and may change without notice. If any past performance or return figures are mentioned, they are for context only, past performance may or may not be sustained in the future. Please consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decision.