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Is Gen Z Significantly Influencing Older Generation Purchases?
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from MarketingCharts, which provides up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers.
Marketers target Gen Zers as a buying audience (despite their lack of wealth, at least in the U.S.), but this cohort can also have knock-on effects in influencing how others shop. About two-thirds (68%) of adults around the world say that teenagers and college-aged people influence where and how they shop, according to a recent Edelman report.
While the influence of this cohort is more prevalent among peers than older adults, more than half (53%) of respondents ages 59 and older agreed that Gen Z influences their shopping habits.
Interestingly, youths’ influence is heavier in some markets than others. Countries in the broad Asian region (including the Arabian peninsula) are the most heavily influenced by Gen Z, with more than eight in 10 respondents in India (90%), China (83%), the UAE (83%), Saudi Arabia (82%), and South Korea (81%) saying that adults of this generation influence their shopping habits.
In contrast, only about half of adults in the U.S. (53%) and Canada (52%) say that’s the case, and even fewer (47%) in the U.K. concur.
Nonetheless, most adults around the world also believe that Gen Z influences how they buy online and through apps (67%), how they give brands negative feedback (62%), how and where they talk about brands (62%), and how they connect with brands on social media (57%).
Gen Z’s influence extends to brands’ CSR efforts, too: two-thirds (67%) of respondents overall say that teenagers and college-aged people influence their expectations for a product’s environmental friendliness, while more than six in 10 say the same about Gen Z’s influence on their expectations for the diversity in a brand’s advertising (62%) and employee diversity (61%).
As such, it appears that marketers should be targeting Gen Zers not only as a buying audience but also as one that influences the habits of the broader population.
The results are based on a May survey of 13,802 adults across 14 countries: Brazi, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, UAE, U.K., and the U.S.
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Does it make sense that Gen Z is heavily influencing the shopping tendencies of older generations? Might that be a phenomenon that all younger generations share, or are Gen Zers a more influential generation?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Ken Morris
Managing Partner Cambridge Retail Advisors
Gene Detroyer
Professor, International Business, Guizhou University of Finance & Economics and University of Sanya, China.
It makes some sense, especially for parents with Gen Z kids or those who associate with Gen Z in some way. I also expect Gen Z exert some influence through social media, which is consumed by older generations. Beyond that I think the study is rather weak: asking people a couple of questions as to whether they’re influenced by college kids and teens isn’t really conclusive proof or anything. There are much more complex forces at play: how trends and cultural shifts enter the zeitgeist is much more than about one generation.
I am not sure what “strongly influence” means.
My GenZ grandchildren certainly influence how we buy online and through apps, how they give brands negative feedback, and how to stop brands from bombarding you with social media. We have heard more than once, “Don’t buy from them, they don’t treat their employees well”, or ‘They are not environmentally friendly”. Of course, when need just plain help with the computer or phone, we go to them.
As a marketer, however, I would not move one dollar from my target audience to GenZ to get my target audience to buy my product. I’d rather target the bullseye.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, but has been around for ever. The older folks are slow on the uptake but eventually catch on. Music in the 60s is a great example, with groups like The Beatles going mainstream very quickly. Technology today is the prime example, with iPhone usage exploding over the last decade.
It’s interesting that influence skips two generations and goes in the opposite direction of “tradition.” The wise old people are apparently a thing of the past. Welcome to widespread reverse mentoring. The key for marketers is to understand how this flow of communication works and to not be too obvious about leveraging it.
My sentiments exactly Ken. Young people have long had an influence on older people as they are more on top of trends and movements.
Everyone wants to look younger, but when it comes to wearing Gen Z faves like crop tops, good luck with that.
#DYING
Unless you count the things I buy for my grandkids I can’t say that Gen Z has influenced any of my purchases. I tend to look more towards older Millennials, Gen X, and other Baby Boomers for ideas and advice.
As a Gen X, I do listen intently to my Gen Z daughter about media trends, popular IP, and hardware (she taught me how to take nice star pictures with the iPhone when we were up on Lake Superior for vacation this month). It goes the other way with my wife and I teaching her what to look for in quality clothing, news media, cooking, and driving. Most of our Gen X friends with kids have a similar “collaborative” relationship with their Zoomers – remembering how our own Boomer parents failed to engage us in the 70s-80s & trying to not make those mistakes while not going too far in the tiger direction…
This doesn’t feel like a new phenomenon…at all. Maybe the internet and social media have given today’s younger generations a bigger, louder megaphone than before, but younger generations have always been the early adopters of emerging trends. And older generations have always been slower, later adopters. Gen Z just happens to have the benefit (?) of access to a platform with a level of scale that earlier young generations couldn’t tap into.
This makes inherent sense if you consider demographics – especially the role of Gen X. Sandwiched between two massive generations, Gen X has always had to be more open to trends and fashions set both above and below them (one of the reasons why fashion seems to keep repeating the 60s, 70s, and 80s). We were never the target market. When Millenials began to influence things, they were up against another target market – the Boomers, so their influence was reduced as Boomers kept doing what they’ve always done as they remained the key target for most retailers. Now that Gen Z is the ‘young and cool’ influencing generation, the demographics have shifted. The more malleable Gen X consumer who now has some financial security is more open to new trends, Boomers are more likely to want to be cool for their grandkids than they were with their kids – and Millenials share a lot of the same values as Gen Z and are happy to ‘stay cool’ as long as possible.
“Influence”, “target” …those are pretty vague terms. This article is quite data-lite – actually it seems to be a very broad claim without even fuzzy numbers trying to support it – so there seems to be little reason to challenge the conventional thinking: marketing (should and does) overwhelmingly targets the group who will be buying; targeting other demos in hopes of turning them into influencers is a sideshow, at best,
This is not a new “trend” or behavior for consumers, the same thing happened when Millenials, Gen Xers and Boomers first stepped into their buying power too. Each new generation represents the most current, up-to-date shopping habits of buyers. And as the first digital-native generation, it stands to reason that Gen Z is going to push online retailers to adopt new technologies and features the most. These trends trickle up to older generations, who have more spending power due to financial security. Ultimately this influence comes down to convenience. As more efficient and convenient shopping opportunities crop up (such as mobile and BOPIS), older generations are going to be quick to adopt them as well – why make things harder than they need to be?
GenZ is at the age where they can influence the entire household, not just the parents. While their influence may not have long term impact on older generations, GenZ can influence how parents shop for younger kids, and this can have long-term impact on younger generations.
Marketers would be wise to realize the aspirational influence GenZ can have and leverage their voice to bring younger generations along.
This could be true because much of the content on social media, like TikTok, is generated by the younger generation and consumed by the older generation.
Adult children influence their parents. They’re digital natives and more likely to be tuned into what’s new and hot.
But to target (and spend money on) adult children as influencers to their parents is a long shot. With marketing technology you can be in front of whomever you want, which is so much easier and effective than hoping and praying their children suggest something.