Mariages.net presents the results of the first 360º study of the wedding market in France, carried out in collaboration with Google, HEC Paris, and ESADE
- “One of the main discoveries was that wedding-related Google searches have been increasing from year to year. There was a more than 14% rise in such queries between 2015 and January 2018,” Cécile van Steenberge, the director of Google Marketing Solutions France, remarks.
- The preface, which was written by Gachoucha Kretz, a professor of Marketing at HEC, emphasizes the “Premium” positioning of French companies in the marital industry.
- “The profile of future married couples is in the full throes of change: they are more informed and have a precise idea of what they want,” Carles Torrecilla, a professor of Marketing and Market Research who helped develop the study, explains.
February 25th, 2019 – The wedding white paper produced by Mariages.net, a leading wedding platform on a national and international scale that is a part of the WeddingWire group, is a 360° study of the marital industry that reveals information and numerical data that is based on more than 4,000 questionnaires, which were completed by both future married couples and companies. The work was produced in collaboration with the ESADE trade school as well as with Google and HEC Paris’s participation. It is a crucial book about weddings and a must-have tool for industry players.
The process of planning a wedding is becoming increasingly digital. These days, 93% of couples go online to get ideas and find information for their wedding. 58% of them surf the web looking for service providers. This is one of the main observations that is brought up in the pages of the “Wedding White Paper: pre-conceived notions, challenges, reality and fiction,” a 360° study of the wedding industry that was carried out by Mariages.net and Carles Torrecilla, a professor of Marketing and of Market Studies at the ESADE trade school. The observation is further based on the amount of smartphone searches which, since June 2015, has surpassed that of those that are carried out via computer, making the smartphone the preferred tool of couples who are fully engaged in marriage preparations.
The study, which was carried out by the ESADE and Mariages.net, provides an overview of the preparation process and organization of today’s weddings. Based on a questionnaire that was aimed at both couples and wedding service providers, the study used data provided by Google that detects the latest trends in the industry. The book’s preface was written by Gachoucha Kretz, a Marketing Professor at HEC Paris, who locates the study within an overview of French companies today, which are more and more oriented towards “Premium” type services.
Nina Pérez, CEO of Mariages.net: “This book was made in order to shed some light on the current situation of the wedding industry, by analyzing it from two different points of view: that of future married couples and that of companies. It is a study that goes far beyond the descriptive, economic, and socio-demographic information that is typical of this kind of research. We decided to base ourselves on the feedback and experiences of primary industry players and we are happy to be able to say that the level of company participation was very high. This suggests that this is a modern industry that wants to improve itself.”
This book analyzes the key points in the industry by observing each of the aspects that organizing a wedding involves and by identifying current trends. Mariages.net’s study shows that the industry is enjoying a positive and healthy upward trend and that the various industry players are responding to market demand and perpetually reinventing themselves in order to keep up with a type of demand that is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Among the primary subjects that are broached in the book are: the industry’s growth, new trends, future married couples’ profiles, the choice of dress and suit, service providers, customer satisfaction and perception, the price of services, honey moons, and much, much, more.
Wedding-related internet searches are increasing from year to year
Cécile van Steenberge, Marketing director for Google Solutions France: “Google’s mission is to organize information on a global scale in order to render it accessible and useful to all. It is with this in mind that we collaborated on the Mariages.net project with the WeddingWire group, in order to share statistics, ideas, and information related to this area of business. One of the main discoveries was that wedding-related Google searches are increasing from year to year. To be more specific, there was a more than 14% rise in such queries between 2015 and January 2018. It is also important to underline that wedding-related research made using a smartphone has also been increasing from year to year.”
An increasingly “Premium” market
Gachoucha Kretz, professor of Marketing at HEC Paris: “What Mariages.net has to offer here is a particularly illuminating report about the wedding market and its specificities. Weddings are not limited to the “Big Day” but constitute an overall experience. The wedding industry is faced with the digital transformation from the consumer’s point of view: information research, getting inspired by existing weddings, reviewing comments, all of these things are now done mostly online, often using mobile devices (i.e. smartphones), and this is something that industry players need to adapt to. The wedding market is an increasingly “premium” market where future married couples are not willing to make quality concessions for cost-related reasons. Industry players should therefore have no trouble creating value, provided they are able to develop flexible and customizable offers for their customers.”
The real cost of a wedding
As far as the real cost of a wedding in France goes, the study carried out by ESADE and Mariages.net indicates that the average cost is €15,575 and that 60% of weddings cost more than they were meant to. What is more, as the years go by, the role of parents has increasingly taken on less and less importance. Weddings are now no longer their affair because these days, couples have their own professional situations and are able to handle their wedding expenses themselves.
Carles Torrecilla ends his analysis with some thoughts on the market’s diversity: “We are thus facing a growing market that is entering the segmentation phase, which is to say a market that will soon be made up of very heterogenous groups. Companies in the industry will therefore not be able to become specialized in one type of wedding in particular. They will have to be real chameleons and know how to adapt to the types of customers that they encounter.”
You can find the Wedding White Paper in full here: https://bit.ly/2MCGyY5
About Mariages.net
Mariages.net, a leading wedding platform in France and on a global scale, was born to help future married couples plan the wedding that they envision in a fun and practical way. Thanks to its international presence, the platform, which is part of the WeddingWire group, has a directory of more than 400,000 field professionals today. It also has a community of more than 2,000,000 future married couples. Mariages.net offers a directory of qualified professionals and makes thousands of ideas and pieces of advice available to future married couples, as well as a panel of tools for organizing their wedding: count-down scheduling, guest lists, budget management, wedding locations, wedding lists, wedding catalogs… In 2016, Mariages.net was voted best website of the year and most popular website in the Community category. The WeddingWire group has operations in North America, South America, Europe, and Asian, and is present in 15 countries (the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, etc.) through the following websites: WeddingWire.com, Bodas.net, Matrimonio.com, Mariages.net, Casamentos.pt, Bodas.com.mx, Casamentos.com.br, Matrimonio.com.co, Matrimonios.cl, Casamientos.com.ar, Matrimonio.com.pe, Weddingspot.co.uk, Casamiento.com.uy, Weddingwire.ca, and Weddings.co.in.