MIllennials “Kill” Retailers
Retail businesses spend a lot of money trying to understand how to please the Millennials, who grow up as current and future potential customers in size. But an expert says this is a silly strategy.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Retail Guru Robin Lewis wrote that Millennials’ spending patterns are more of a problem than a prospect for Retail. The Market is already over-saturated and weak on the level of consumer performance especially the boomers. The Millennials have, in addition, a small amount of money to other consumers, and a different behavior that specifies their consumer patterns and extends to the essence of life as they perceive it and do it. This is a big threat to retail.
The Millennials do not appear in many stores, so the shopping malls are trapped. Now they can find what they want through their smart phones. At macroeconomics’ terms, the west world characterized as the “developed world” is getting older, and the younger generation is not demographically big enough to replace the old one, Enterprises are suffering from recession because there are not enough young people to consume while consumption is growing in alternative channels. So why do retailers continue to target Millennials? The simple answer is that there is always obsession with youth as future consumers. But, as BI Intelligence says, understanding the demographics of e-commerce is vital to any successful Retail Business.
Thus, Retail Businesses are trying to understand Millennials in order to make them active and profitable consumers. But that is futile.
Recently, analyst Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research told Business Insider that satisfying teenagers and Millennials is not the smartest move. Millennials would prefer to spend their money on mobile phones, for the most part. Also, their slow engagement in the mindset of classical consumption and their poor income situation do not allow them to become the new sources of profitability in the Retail Market.
Then why are retailers so passionate about Millennials?
"This obsession with youth," Mulpuru said, dates back to the 1970s, where marketing drew the approach to the consumer with the belief that consumer behavior would be similar in the past, so that acquiring a new consumer as client early in the age, would have the advantage of lasting. However, "long-term loyalty" is nowadays a different concept in terms of scale and mechanisms for its urturing and preservation.