SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Chocolate candy sales made during the week of Valentine’s Day are expected to top more than $323 million, according to The Nielsen Co. Valentine’s week is the most popular for chocolate candy sales, and ranks third behind Halloween and Easter for all candy sales. Although consumers are expected to buy fewer bottles of sparkling and rosé wine during the same time period, they’ll spend more per bottle, according to Nielsen. Members of a group known as New Empty Nesters may be among those who splurge. According to Claritas, a Nielsen service, members of the group that includes upper-middle income, older consumers with grown children who have recently moved out, are three times more likely to drink rosé wine during any given week. Other consumer segments more likely to drink rosé wine are members of a segment identified as God’s Country (upper income, mostly middle-aged couples in spacious homes), Gray Power (older middle-class, home-owning suburbanite retirees), Big Fish Small Pond (older, upper-class, college-educated professionals, often leading citizens of small-town communities and Winner’s Circle (mostly 25- to 44-year-old couples with large families in new-money subdivisions).
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