The demographic of shoppers has always been important for product development, marketing, merchandising, store design and more.
Consumer behaviour had been changing since before the pandemic but the pandemic accelerated these changes: many shopping local, others using different channels to shop, and cash strapped shoppers are looking for cheaper alternatives. This quick shifts in consumer behaviour makes it difficult for retailers to keep up with changing demographic of consumers.
To understand the changes, we must look at the cause. It’s easy to attribute the changes in shopper demographic to the pandemic, however, there are other factors that have added to it.
Declining birth rate is one of them. With the exception 2004 – 2008, birth rate has been in constant decline in the UK for decades. The pandemic was expected to improve birth rates, however the financial and emotional stresses led to a decline of birth rate of 0.49% in 2021, an all time low. Family size in the UK, for instance, is expected to be 1.59 children per woman by mid- 2045, according to ONS predictions.
This means more older shoppers and less young, especially with western technology and medicine increasing life expectancy. And as more women focus on their careers, their purchasing power will also improve.
When considering income distribution, it’s clear that baby boomers are the wealthiest generation thanks to low-cost education, mortgages, and business loans they enjoyed. In comparison, millennials suffer student loan debts, high inflations unmatched by wage increases, global financial crises, leaving them with the same purchasing power as in the late 70s.
Retailers love young shoppers and spend a lot of resources attracting them but tuning in to the demands of the older generation could prove to be beneficial since they are the ones with the highest purchasing power.
Lifestyles of different demographics also dictate how they shop. For example, the older generation have more time to shop in-store and don’t use much technology in comparison to millennials and Gen Z’s. Younger generations have different priorities when shopping because of their lifestyle. Their technological skills, lack of time, and lower budgets makes online shopping appealing to them.
The younger generations value experiences, even more so since the pandemic. Therefore, attracting them in-store will require moving away from typical sales and providing an experience.
In order to decide who your target customer is, you have to understand their needs, motives, and lifestyle. Then you can attract them with the products, window displays, marketing, store layout etc.
TrackIn video analytics can help with profiling in-store shoppers with it’s highly accurate demographic analysis feature, giving you the power to target customers effectively.
Please get in contact for more information:
Sabrina.chowdhury@trackin.tech