Dutch consumers can distinguish only 3 flowers
Sunflowers, tulips and roses: these flowers are correctly recognised by about 85% of Dutch consumers aged between 18 and 75 years. Other flowers score lower in research conducted by Royal FloraHolland. These top 3 best-known flowers are followed by narcissus, hyacinths, carnations and cut Hortensia.
The insights provided by this research are used to produce the content of the Flower Agenda. The results also provide some important input for various promotion campaigns and to target consumers more effectively.
Do you recognise this flower?
At least 70% of the respondents could match the right name to images of the top 3. For the other flowers, there was a much greater gap between recognition and knowing the right name. For narcissus and hyacinth, the percentage was about 60%. For freesia, gerbera and lilies, the ratio was 1 of 2: half of the people correctly identified the flower in the photo. It was lower for other flowers. Gypsophilia formed a striking exception. It ended up as one of the less well-known flowers on the list (41% recognised the product), but 60% could identify it by name when shown a photo.
Familiarity with flowers and name recognition. The top 10 (of 27 flowers presented). Source: Royal FloraHolland (the Netherlands n=1,054, each respondent was shown ΒΌ of the flowers)
Confusion
Many Dutch people find that the flowers look alike, which confuses them. For example, carnations are sometimes confused with roses. And ranunculus was incorrectly considered a rose, peony or dahlia.
From left to right: carnation, rose, ranunculus and peony
Other flowers that were confused included chrysanthemums, asters and marguerite. Limonium was identified as lavender by practically everyone. And many consumers mistook lisianthus for a carnation.
From left to right: chrysanthemum, aster, marguerite and lisianthus
Familiarity declining
In 2014 FloraHolland conducted the same survey. At that time, roses, tulips and sunflowers were also the best-known flowers. But they scored higher, in terms of both recognition (around 90%) and naming the correct name (at least 80%). The knowledge about flowers thus seems to be declining. And the same difference is seen with most of the other flowers.
About the market research
In March 2016 Royal FloraHolland carried out a consumer survey as part of the Flower Agenda. Over 1,000 Dutch people aged between 18 and 75 years were asked about their familiarity with flowers. FloraHolland also enquired about what associations they linked to the different flowers, their favourite colours for each flower, which flowers suited which season, and which flowers they found pretty and which they did not like.
They were also asked about their purchasing habits with regard to flowers and the sales channels they used. The same survey was conducted again in the second quarter of 2016 in Germany, France and the UK.
Source: Royal FloraHolland / Photos: Flower Council Holland
