The Post-Millennial Retail Environment is Right Around the Corner
For more than a decade now, marketers, retailers and analysts have been trying to crack the code to understanding the elusive, mysterious Millennial generation. In many cases, it seems like they’re still struggling to connect with that crucial 18-34 demographic—the pocket currently occupied entirely by Millennials.
However, the Millennial generation’s successor in the marketplace, the Gen-Z consumer, is about to come of age in the next few years.
Marketers aren’t wasting any time trying to connect with and understand today’s post-millennials. They know from experience that they have no choice but to hit the ground running if they want to reach teenage and young adult consumers early on.
Gen-Z’s Growing Purchasing Power
The group of young people commonly referred to as “Generation Z”—that is, people born beginning around 1998—already possess about $44 billion in annual purchasing power. That’s pretty impressive, considering that the oldest among them are just now heading off to college, and it’s more than enough to have caught marketers’ early attention.
Of course, the Millennial years largely took what people knew about traditional marketing and threw it out the window. As a result, marketers and retailers found themselves scrambling to come up with a way to reach young consumers.
To avoid a repeat performance, those who want to sell to Gen-Z consumers should already be doing their homework. We should be studying what went wrong last time and learning how to connect with these new young people before the bulk of them approach adulthood.
So, what are some of the best tips for reaching out to Post-Millennial shoppers?
1. Focus on Mobile Platforms
While Millennials grew up alongside the internet, young people today are the first generation born into a fully connected world.
The vast majority of them have never known a life without social media, smartphones and omnipresent Wi-Fi access. To them, there is no separation between the online world and the in-real-life world. They want their shopping experience to reflect their reality, and in their reality, the line between one channel and another is not just blurry—it’s nonexistent.
Young consumers demand an integrated, streamlined experience, everywhere from retail stores to restaurants and even to their financial institutions, and this is not a trend that is going away. The interconnection of digital and physical channels will only grow tighter with time.
To illustrate, check out Fitle, a crowdfunded app that allows users to generate their own avatar with 3D modeling software using their phone camera. Once they’ve generated an avatar, users can try on clothes virtually, to see how the fit would look without needing to actually try-on the clothes. Or, check out the “virtual department store” unveiled by eBay in May 2016, enabling users to browse products using a virtual reality interface.
2. Acknowledge That Investments in Tech Experiences Pay Off
It’s worthwhile to invest in high-tech experiences for customers, because:
- Those investments feedback and reverberate throughout the customer-merchant interaction.
- They streamline the customer experience and encourage customers to interact with the brand.
- The more time customers spend interacting with a brand, the more data marketers are able to collect.
- With more data, merchants can build a more dynamic, complete picture of their customers
Detailed knowledge of consumer preferences, in turn, provides an increasingly personalized customer experience.
- 49% of customers would let retailers collect their personal data
- 54% of customers are comfortable with retailers storing their purchase history
- 65% of customers are comfortable receiving purchasing advice based on their current location
According to the Cisco Customer Experience Report, customers are largely open to the idea of granting access to their information in exchange for a more personalized experience.
Technology gives merchants invaluable insight into their customer’s feelings and behaviors. Merchants can observe customers’ wants in real time, then act to fulfill them. Of course, no age group is more expectant of this level of integration than Gen-Z.
For example, let’s say that the weather forecast suggests a hot and sunny weekend, and talk of the beach is trending on social media. Retailers can use that information to know to push swimsuits, sunscreen and beach towels especially hard. This is exactly the kind of connectivity that young people are looking for in their brand interactions.
- Deliver custom content based on each customer’s past searches, purchases and stated interests.
- Personalize any requests for feedback. Keep surveys short, with questions relevant to the customer’s experience to provide more useful data and drive customer enmity for your brand.
- Use the customer’s name in order to create a more personal feel.
- Integrate your CRM platform with a database of your customers’ information, such as phone number, email and purchasing history for instant recall by customer service associates.
3. Walk the Line of Customer Satisfaction
At the same time, it’s important to maintain a balance between integration and invasion.
The Cisco report also revealed that while 69% of consumers would be willing to give more personal information to their bank, 57% don’t want that information shared, no matter how much it might improve service.
While young consumers want customized experiences, they don’t want to feel like brands are intruding on them. These young, tech-savvy consumers don’t want to feel like they’re being treated as a research subject, and they don’t want to give up control of their data.
4. Be an Effective, Human Brand Messenger
Young customers want to get the sense that they’re interacting with real people, not robots. Therefore, merchants can’t rely on scripts, static forms or automated responses for customer interaction. These come across as inauthentic, and young consumers are immediately turned-off by inauthenticity, even more so than their parents.
To connect with Gen-Z consumers, sellers need to be able to communicate in a conversational manner. Customers want to be reminded that they are not talking to a robot, but that there are actual people on the other end of the line.
In addition, remember to keep a constant eye on social media. That’s where people interact most with brands, so be sure to respond quickly to any questions or comments, preferably using the same channel that the customer chose. Otherwise, merchants run the risk of turning away young consumers accustomed to instantaneous response.
For that same reason, merchants don’t want to try and funnel them toward email or phone, as that will force them to take extra steps, thus leading to the same problem.
5. Maintain a Good Reputation
When looking to attract Gen-Z customers, the last thing merchants want is for word to spread that they do not provide effective service online. Word-of-mouth is a serious matter for young consumers—nearly 2/3 of Millennials check user-generated reviews and peers’ opinions before making a purchase, and the figure is even higher for Gen-Z shoppers.
Know Your Audience
Researchers suggests that Gen-Z shoppers are passionate, conscientious and thoroughly wired-in. They’re looking for products and services that are not just flashy, but which inspire them and reflect their high-tech reality.
In order to market to these young people, sellers need to be just as highly-connected as their audience—otherwise, they’ll be left in a virtual cloud of dust.
