By Laura Albert, Market Insights Analyst, CivicScience
The Millennial fascination is beginning to wane as a new generation is on the cusp of leading the pack and making headlines. Over the past few years, consumer-facing brands have been obsessed with Millennials, especially in the retail world. Companies have been forced to change their business strategies in order to connect and target Millennials, in the hopes of winning this segment as customers.
But now there’s a new group stealing the spotlight – Generation Z. This younger generation, with the oldest just shy of 20, is already snagging the new headlines. Phrases such as “the next big retail disruptor,” “Millennials on steroids,” and “Gen Z is changing the world,” have been used to describe the next sought after generation. So what can retailers learn about Gen Z? And how do their shopping habits differ from the shopping behaviors of Millennials? Using CivicScience data, we were able to find some interesting differences between the two generations.
We studied how Millennials (18-34 year olds) and Gen Z (13-17 years old since we only poll those 13 and older) answered a number of shopping questions in our database since January of 2015. In order for retailers to better understand Gen Z, and how to reach and connect to this younger generation, we wanted to explore how the two generations’ shopping habits differed.
