Valentine’s Day is this week, so here’s a related piece~ If you have anything nice planned this year, I hope you have a great day! For anyone reading this with little understanding of Valentine’s Day celebrations in Japan, the standard practice is for ladies to give chocolates to their crushes, partners, and male friends on the 14th February. This is reciprocated on the 14th March by the guys who received the chocolates - that’s why this piece is making such a big deal about the reversal of the roles. [Source]
What happened to men giving women chocolate on Valentine’s Day? The Valentine’s Day sales war. This year is all about ‘reward chocolate’...
It’s Valentine’s Day on the 14th February. For those in the sweets business, it’s the biggest sales opportunity of the year. On this day, every manufacturer will come out with a variety of promotions.
There’s been a big push for ‘reward chocolate’ (buying chocolate for yourself) this year, but when you look back at Valentine’s Days gone by, many of these blah blah chocolate promotions have come to nothing much. Can ‘reward’ chocolate outlast its predecessors?
It was a big thing in ‘09, but now...
On Valentine’s Day in 2009 there was a sudden media storm about ‘reverse chocolates’. As the name implies, the usual practice of men receiving chocolates from women was reversed, with women receiving chocolates from men. It started in 2008 when Morinaga and Company held a Valentine’s survey in which they picked up on the trend. In the year following, manufacturers printed reversed logos on packaging to be put on the market as ‘reverse chocolates’. It was an instant hit.
