Love it or hate it, you can’t escape the fact that Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. For the romantic proportion of the world’s population, this is an opportunity to express emotions with a card, flowers or a gift. For retailers and shopping centres, it’s a welcome chance to boost sales – provided they create the right recipe for nurturing shopper affections.

Love is a powerful motivator for purchasing, but it’s important that retail organisations understand not only why people shop, but when and how, to capture their custom as well as their hearts.

To use the UK as an example, our exclusive consumer insight data revealed that Thursday February 13th was the second busiest shopping day of the month last year, but in 2013 pre-Valentine’s Day activity peaked on Monday February 11th.

Understanding shopper behaviour patterns in the build-up to major one-day events gives retailers and shopping centres the power to optimise their businesses for conversions and repeat visits.

For instance, in retail stores, identifying not only peak shopping days, but times, in the lead up to Valentine’s Day enables store managers to schedule more sales associates during busy periods. By enhancing the staff-to-customer ratio, retailers can increase sales conversions and manage queues to create a heart-warming in-store experience.

Knowing when quieter trading periods fall also provides stores and centres with an opportunity to actively drive traffic. Targeting consumers with limited edition promotions during times of low footfall can potentially boost performance throughout this critical trading period.

It also increases the likelihood of shoppers enjoying a more peaceful, less rushed experience – which may persuade them to shop at that time again going forward.

Another important thing to remember is that Valentine’s Day presents retailers and shopping centres with profit opportunities throughout the event weekend. Unlike Christmas Day, the retail rush doesn’t end the day beforehand.

Particularly with this year’s celebrations falling on a Saturday, retailers and shopping centres can anticipate a surge of on-the-day shoppers rushing out to buy a last minute gift. There may even be a small swell of activity on Sunday and Monday, accounting for those either not seeing their loved one on February 14th, or attempting to dig themselves out of the dog house!

However footfall unfolds over the coming week, it’s crucial that retail organisations use genuine shopper data to forecast traffic during the season of love, rather than relying on often outdated presumptions. After all, most Valentine’s Day shoppers will be putting great care and effort into their gift; the same level of thought and understanding should be applied to courting their custom.

ShopperTrak has created a wide range of business insight packs that focus on predicting seasonal trends, allowing you to concentrate on what’s important – download our insight guides.