Decoding The Shopping Mentality Of Millenials
Indian millennials constitute about 1/5th of the global millennial population. India, a country with a population of 1.3 billion people, has millennials forming 45% of its working population. A generation that, since the past year has played a phenomenal role in supporting and influencing the market growth across various business verticals, especially that of ‘shopping’. So, it’s understandable to want to ‘decode the shopping mentality of millennials’ to analyse their buying pattern, rise past their expectations and gradually lead businesses towards increased sales & profits.
What Drives Their Thought Process?
Millennials especially, have started associating their purchases to be an extension of their personality. With a spend rate of 54.1% of their disposable income on Entertainment, Apparels and Accessories, this generation is more inclined and better equipped towards enhancing their standard of living.
A higher focus is placed on the ‘Quality’ rather than the ‘Quantity’ of the product. This automatically leads them to invest in products which gives them a ‘feel good’ vibe.
In the past decade, the concept of shopping has witnessed a paradigm shift from ‘family purchases’ to ‘individualistic indulgent’ shopping. Unlike the previous generation which insisted on ‘saving up for retirement’, today’s millennials align with ‘YOLO’ (You Only Live Once) and ‘Live Life King Size’, which steers them towards making shopping an important part of their ‘living in the moment’ life.
Affinity vs Belief, Where Does Brand Loyalty Stand?
While decoding the shopping mentality of millennial shoppers, it is an obvious observation that they prefer what a brand brings to the table rather than the brand name itself. The wind of ‘brand loyalty’ has long passed. Recommendations coming via word of mouth are still appreciated. However, Gen Z prefers doing its own research to understand the features of a product and services offered by a brand before making a purchase.
Owing to this, a notable attempt by brands is their advancement into the digital space to improve their reach to a wider audience, increased customer interaction and services.
Despite what the shopping mentality of the generation before might have been, the millennials are one to prefer brand stickiness, equity and affinity.
What Do Millennials Yearn For?
While shopping for oneself, millennials usually look out for a ‘unique/different’ factor that catches their attention. If they spot anything remotely off-beat, they leap right at it. As mentioned above, unlike the previous, the current generation isn’t captivated by 'mainstream products’, and they are instead very selective about their approach towards shopping.
At a time when social media is booming, in terms of usage by the younger generation, many brands are pressured to raise their marketing strategies, in order to attract more shoppers.
In conclusion, it is imperative for the industry leaders across all domains to consider the new consumerism graph and decipher a millennial’s mentality towards shopping if they plan on expanding their footprint in their chosen sector. With the changing demographics, comes the weight of increasing expectations which can only be fulfilled by understanding their mindset and serving them exactly what attracts them.
Millennials play a crucial role in the growth of industries across multiple domains, globally. The key to unlocking success is to decode their shopping mentality.
