Generation game: how to sell to all ages

Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde nov­el­ist and poet, declared that “who­ev­er said mon­ey can’t buy hap­pi­ness sim­ply didn’t know where to go shop­ping”. The mete­oric rise of ecom­merce has, 75 years after her death, giv­en this apho­rism added mean­ing.

Thanks to the pow­er of the inter­net and the ubiq­ui­ty of smart devices and appli­ca­tions, today’s con­sumers have nev­er had more places to go shop­ping and be hap­py, with­out even hav­ing to leave their homes. With such a wealth of choice at their fin­ger­tips, they’re unlike­ly to be patient when a retail­er fails to hit the stan­dard of ecom­merce expe­ri­ence to which they’ve become accus­tomed.

Any brand that fails to engage with its tar­get cus­tomers in their pre­ferred place to shop will pay a heavy price. The lack of an effec­tive ecom­merce strat­e­gy has proved dam­ag­ing for Top­shop, Deben­hams and Pri­mark, to name but three lag­gards.

It’s clear that retail­ers need to keep pace with con­sumers’ chang­ing require­ments to sur­vive. The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the shop­ping expe­ri­ence, accel­er­at­ed by the Covid-19 lock­downs, has trans­formed how cus­tomer loy­al­ty is gained and lost. New sta­tis­tics indi­cate what shop­pers want from etail­ers varies depend­ing on their age. 

A sur­vey pub­lished by Sitecore, a com­pa­ny focused on improv­ing con­sumers’ online expe­ri­ences, sug­gests that 61% of 18- to 24-year olds are less loy­al to brands than they were before the pan­dem­ic, com­pared with 33% of baby-boomers, while 69% of these post-mil­len­ni­als have become less patient with poor­ly func­tion­ing web­sites. 

Mean­while, research from cus­tomer-ser­vice soft­ware firm Zen­desk has indi­cat­ed that 80% of UK con­sumers will switch retail­ers after only one bad expe­ri­ence. 

A great opportunity to innovate and expand the customer base

“The pan­dem­ic has undoubt­ed­ly changed the way we shop,” says Jeni Mundy, Visa’s MD in the UK and Ire­land. “Our research shows that 51% of con­sumers now want a mix of both bricks and clicks for the best expe­ri­ence.”

She con­tin­ues: “As the lines between offline and online con­tin­ue to blur, there is great oppor­tu­ni­ty for busi­ness­es to keep inno­vat­ing to reach new shop­pers, expand their cus­tomer base and build their brands. But dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and age groups have vary­ing pri­or­i­ties, so it’s more impor­tant than ever for retail­ers to tai­lor their web­sites and social media offer­ings to meet their tar­get audi­ences’ needs.”

Visa’s research sug­gests that 18- to 34-year-olds shop main­ly online for a wide vari­ety of goods and ser­vices. “Updat­ing your web­site to show­case the full range of prod­ucts is a good way to attract this audi­ence,” Mundy rec­om­mends. “Many in this age group are also like­ly to shop on social media, so hav­ing a pres­ence here and switch­ing on the ‘swipe up to shop’ func­tion­al­i­ty is a great way to meet them.”

Social media campaigns and digital events encourage micro-influencers

Stud­ies show that con­sumers aged between 35 and 54 most want an effi­cient online shop­ping expe­ri­ence. A well-sign­post­ed web­site is there­fore vital. For peo­ple aged 55 and above, sim­plic­i­ty is the key, so main­tain­ing an unclut­tered, straight­for­ward page design should help to attract and retain them as cus­tomers. 

Francesca Grilli­ni, an ecom­merce man­ag­er at Reckitt, points out that social media plat­forms rang­ing from Tik­Tok and Club­house to Insta­gram and Face­book are espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar among both mil­len­ni­al and gen‑Z audi­ences. 

“Mem­bers of gen­er­a­tion Z are dig­i­tal natives who have atten­tion spans of eight sec­onds, com­pared with mil­len­ni­als’ 12 sec­onds. Yet they are noto­ri­ous­ly loy­al,” she says. “They can quick­ly become brand ambas­sadors, act­ing as micro-influ­encers on social chan­nels.”

Ecom­merce is “more about neces­si­ty” for baby boomers, she says, sug­gest­ing that peo­ple in this gen­er­a­tion have changed their shop­ping behav­iour the most dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Ecom­merce has “opened pre­vi­ous­ly closed doors” for boomers, many of whom have been forced to shop online more often because of lock­downs and health con­cerns. 

The Covid cri­sis oblig­ed most high-street busi­ness­es to close their doors at var­i­ous points over the past 18 months. North Lon­don restau­rant Top Cuvée was among them, but it took a glass-half-full approach to the prob­lem and has suc­cess­ful­ly turned to ecom­merce, becom­ing an online wine sup­pli­er. It has fos­tered cus­tomer loy­al­ty by adopt­ing a mul­ti­chan­nel mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, includ­ing email newslet­ters, social media cam­paigns (the firm’s Insta­gram fol­low­ing has grown ten­fold to 35,000 in a year) and inter­ac­tive online events. 

Brodie Meah, co-founder and chef at Top Cuvée, says: “Our mail­ing list is a great way of keep­ing peo­ple informed and engaged, but we gen­er­ate a lot of sales from social media too. We recent­ly held a dig­i­tal East­er egg hunt, which drove mass engage­ment online as well as attract­ing over 1,000 cus­tomers to our phys­i­cal store.”

Tom Pugh is direc­tor of client ser­vices at Revive Man­age­ment, a soft­ware com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in pay­ment sys­tems. He salutes any retail busi­ness that’s will­ing to embrace a mul­ti­chan­nel approach. 

“There is a huge demand for them to accel­er­ate, improve and enhance their dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties and to blend these with in-store expe­ri­ences to add val­ue,” he says. “Omnichan­nel strate­gies allow busi­ness­es to cre­ate breadth and increased acces­si­bil­i­ty to their cus­tomers.”

Con­nect­ing with con­sumers across var­i­ous chan­nels enables a deep­er under­stand­ing of their gen­er­a­tional habits, which is why invest­ment in ecom­merce is worth­while, Pugh adds. “Pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a vari­ety of chan­nels of engage­ment is key, as it empow­ers them to inter­act via their pre­ferred chan­nel.” 

After all, shop­ping instils hap­pi­ness – as Gertrude Stein would con­cur.