A Youthful Rescue? Millenials to Boost Holiday Shopping Numbers

We previously reported that teen spending is down during the pandemic to record lows, as part of the more nuanced differences and insights between separate categories such as the generational groups.

Yet in an interesting twist of fate, it is the millennial generation that may end up saving Christmas… well, helping to boost holiday sales this season. This was the conclusion from a recent panel discussion led by the vowel-shy but highly authoritative B2B platform for the payments industry PYMNTS, named On The Agenda.

The four-person panel agreed that despite the huge changes and shifts in consumer behavior and retail operations, more important was that we are STILL shopping.

“We see millennial and Gen Z customers absolutely shopping, and the brands that deeply understand them are growing at faster rates than they have ever grown before,” one of the panelists said.

“And there’s a huge opportunity. The exclusive product-drop ecosystem is on fire, the online market and just the frequency with which customers are transacting is definitely elevating. There are real opportunities for those brands that deeply understand their consumer.”

And it’s a tricky environment to capture the pulse of what customers are doing because consumer habits have been, for some part, unpredictable. For example, we have seen that the appetite for makeup has subsided yet we have witnessed a boom in skincare products.

For makeup brands that have ecommerce platforms they have been better able to continue reaching its customers by enabling online shopping as in-store sales remained restricted. But more importantly, we’ve seen that those who optimize their ecommerce for more personal and interactive experiences have been better able to retain customers and win over others. 

I’m talking about those beauty and cosmetic brands that are hosting their websites on platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, whose strengths lie in complex functionality, A/B testing, the ability to adapt anything for marketing campaigns, integration with complicated back-end platforms, etc.

(Perhaps this is why more than half of the top beauty and cosmetic brands choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud – formerly called Demandware.) 

And I suspect that this is an area of the economy that will be targeting the millennial and Gen Zers, given their penchant for these products and their willingness to forge through the holiday season with their dollars in their pockets. And that other sectors of ecommerce territory will want to emphasise their youth credentials to get them spending, too.

PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware) development & strategy teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.