Surveys: On Black Friday, Millennials Will Be In Stores And On Their Smartphones

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping surveys. Two new ones from Wanderful Media and Retale offer insights into the mind of the coveted but elusive Millennial holiday shopper. Both surveys reflect that compared with the general population, Millennials are more eager shoppers and more focused on digital sources, especially mobile, for pre-shopping research. The Retale […]

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‘Tis the season for holiday shopping surveys. Two new ones from Wanderful Media and Retale offer insights into the mind of the coveted but elusive Millennial holiday shopper. Both surveys reflect that compared with the general population, Millennials are more eager shoppers and more focused on digital sources, especially mobile, for pre-shopping research.

The Retale survey found the majority (54 percent) of US adults will not be shopping on Thanksgiving Day. However, Millennials will be hitting stores on Thanksgiving: “57 percent of millennials (18–34 years old) say they plan to shop in-store on Thanksgiving Day.”

Retale millennial shopping

Source: Retale holiday shopping survey (n=1,000 US adults)

On Black Friday, 75 percent of Millennials also plan to be in stores, and mobile will be their shopping tool of choice. Roughly 88 percent will be using smartphones to compare prices, look for deals, research products, make lists, find store locations and post the play-by-play on social networks during the shopping melee.

Wanderful’s survey, among other things, asked about sources consumers used to find holiday sales information. Interestingly, with the exception of email, traditional media sources were still dominant. However, for the Millennial subset of the survey population, email was the top source, followed by websites and mobile apps, and then social media. Traditional media were farther down the list.

Wanderful media millennial shopping

Source: Wanderful Media survey (n=1,000 US adults)

Roughly 35 percent of Wanderful survey respondents had signed up to receive emails from three to five retailers. Another 24 percent had signed up for more than six. The remaining roughly 40 percent were signed up with fewer than two retailers or none at all.

About 67 percent of these survey respondents definitely planned to use mobile shopping apps or were considering it. The majority of those planning to use mobile apps for shopping said they would use three or fewer apps. Below is the list of the most popular shopping apps according to the survey.

Most popular holiday shopping apps

Source: Wanderful Media survey (n=1,000 US adults)

In order, the four most popular shopping apps identified in the survey are: 1) Amazon, 2) Walmart, 3) Cartwheel (Target) and 4) Retailmenot. Beyond this, 65 percent of respondents said they would be open to receiving in-app notifications for sales-related information (45 percent would consider, 20 percent already receive).

Finally, Wanderful found that a majority of shoppers would be willing to photograph and upload their receipts in exchange for a reward or rebate:

About 72 percent of all the shoppers surveyed, and 79 percent of millennials, would be motivated to take a photo of their receipts with a mobile phone and submit it for a rebate of $10 or less.

For a rebate of $5 or less, 56 percent of all shoppers, and 64 percent of millennials, would take a photo of their receipts.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Greg Sterling
Contributor
Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land, a member of the programming team for SMX events and the VP, Market Insights at Uberall.

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