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Spanning the gap
How do you get Millennials and Baby Boomers to shop in the same store?
January 22, 2008
This article originally published in Retail Customer Experience magazine, Feb. 2008.Click hereto download a free PDF version.
Meet Ronnie, a 17-year-old high-school kid who's addicted to mountain biking and PlayStation 3. Ronnie and his buddies spend their time after school playing Guitar Hero III and hanging out at the extreme skating park. He flips burgers on weekends and does about half of his shopping on Amazon.com. He's heading to the mall to get some new jeans.And then there's Walter. At 72, Walter's favorite pastime is gardening. A retired mechanic for a well-known appliance manufacturer, Walter did a tour of duty in Korea with the Marines. He lives a quiet life, enjoying his wife of 53 years, his 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He likes Sinatra, John Wayne and commemorative coin collecting. Right now he's on his way to purchase a new sport coat.
Ronnie and Walter don't exist in a literal sense, but they represent a widening conundrum for retailers. How can a box retailer be hip enough to lure in Ronnie, while staying practical enough to attract Walter?
Youth culture
Some retailers, of course, don't try to go after all age groups, choosing instead to target a specific demographic. Ron Pompei is an award-winning interior designer whose firm, Pompei A.D., has designed the architecture for popular specialty stores such as Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie, which sell trendy clothes to the youth market.
"We designed all the Urban Outfitters for the 18- to 28-year-old," Pompei said. "People that are 40 come up to me and say, 'I hate that store.' I say, 'Great!'"
Today's youth value their individuality, but experts say they also emphasize community. |
"You have to look at what an 18- to 24-yearold is doing in life," he said. "They're defining themselves. This is the point where they're coming into their own identity and they're going to try a lot of identities on before they find the one they like, so you have to create something that has a feeling of flexibility and creativity."
The youth culture values self-expression and deviance from the norm, Pompei said, and stores that want to attract their patronage will have to cater to that.
While today's youth value their individuality, experts say they also emphasize community. They want more than just a stroll through the shopping aisle. They want a place where they can kick back and be with their friends.
"The young adults want to be individuals, but they act in herds. Isn't that a weird paradox?" asked Roman Tsunder, chief executive of Access 360 Media, a marketing network that targets young adults. "For instance, I might be into skate, so I might wear my skate shoes and my skate pants and my Element skate shirt. So I'm an individual, but I want to go where all the other cool skate things are happening."
Boomers and seniors
Mature consumers have much different passion points, say the experts. For one thing, they don't place as much emphasis on trends.
"They're less interested in what people think of them at that point," Pompei said. "They've had enough of that."
While he said Boomers and seniors still value creativity, they define themselves less by what they have and more by what they do.
"Now they have time on their hands that they didn't have before," Pompei said. "They're looking for things to help rediscover their interests. Gardening is one of the top three hobbies in America because people that age want to
be more and more out of the fray and back into nature. They've paid their dues, and they're interested more in what they do and where they go than what they have. But they will buy things that support cool things to do and cool places to go. A lot of these people are doing cultural travel and they're going to buy clothes and objects that support that sort of thing."
Mature consumers define themselves less by what they have and more by what they do. |
One other major factor that plays a role in where the elderly shop: convenience. Mature consumers will flock to retailers that have good parking and that go the extra mile to make the shopping experience easier for them.
Bill Withers, assistant director for the Leadership Institute of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, did a study on a retailer that suffered a sudden drop in sales dollars.
"For some of the mature consumers, they used to offer to bring their parcels to the car for them as a service. They chose to not do that anymore and ... we've actually been able to track those dollars and see them go elsewhere," Withers said.
Shared values
So what can a retail store do to bring seemingly disparate cultures together?
Some experts say the generations are not as disparate as many have come to believe. Consumers all have shared values, and successful retailers will find ways to zero-in on those and capitalize on them.
One such value is the desire to be young. "Everybody wants to feel younger," Tsunder said. "It's the one thing that we all have in common: youth — and everybody is always chasing that."
So how can a retailer like Macy's use that to its advantage? Tsunder said nothing makes a shopper feel younger like music can.
| Retailers successful at catering to all generations have found ways to zero-in and capitalize on shared values. |
To appeal to the different groups, a store could play Dave Matthews ballads in the youth apparel section and regale shoppers in the golfing supplies section with Nat King Cole.
Another commonality among all generations is a strong affinity for community. Pompei said this is a value that Whole Foods has captured in its stores, making them a favored spot for people of all generations.
"If you go into Whole Foods, they've merged a supermarket with a farmers market," Pompei said. "Where would you rather shop, a farmers market or a supermarket? It's easy. Farmers markets are for people. Supermarkets are for product. Go to a farmers market; it's filled with interesting stories. If you go to a supermarket, it's just a bunch of aisles with boxes and bottles and jars."
Marketing to Teens
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"They'll show a man or woman whose face you can't detect," Wolfe said. "You can't tell if it's a young man or an old man or a middle-aged man or an old woman or a young woman or whatever, typically because they're off in the distance. But they're doing something that appeals to people of all ages.
One other value that applies to all demographics? Great customer service.
"Service is a good place to start. It's hard being the best at everything to all ages," said Harvey Hoffenberg, president of New Canaan, Conn.-based branding firm Propulsion. "If you're a bookstore with titles for all ages, you'd better be known for deep subject matter and variety and — here it is again — service."
Creative branding
Branding is well and good for a store like Apple or Starbucks, but again, what about the all-purpose box retailer that's selling everything from groceries to electronics to women's accessories?
Michael Stone is CEO of the Beanstalk Group, a trademark and licensing agency. He said one key to getting people of all ages to walk the aisles of your store is product positioning. For example, he said young people typically won't shop Wal-Mart for clothes, but they will take advantage of the retailer's competitive pricing on electronic goods. So how do you get the young person to walk through apparel?
"Well, the best way to catch their attention is to make sure that you put the clothing space near the electronics space so they can see it when they're shopping for the things that they're in the store for," Stone said.
The key is to develop exclusive brands that will appeal to the demographic you're trying to attract. For example, Wal-Mart carries the Mary-Kate and Ashley brand of clothing and cosmetics to attract the young. JCPenney carries the Chris Madden brand of bedding, furniture and bath items to attract the home owner. Kmart and Macy's feature Martha Stewart products in their stores.
Marketing to Seniors
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"The 60-year-old is going in to buy their groceries. How do you get them to go over into the home department and buy some sheets and pillowcases? You need a brand there that will attract them," Stone said.
It takes a village
Lastly, experts say the box retailer that wants to be relevant to all age groups may have to tear down and rebuild. Today's consumers don't just want to shop. They want an experience that's targeted to them. That sort of customization means the retailer may have to do some creative zoning to develop areas for different age groups.
"Big boxes make the big mistake of thinking they're just a bigger store," Pompei said. "When you get something up to that scale — hundreds of thousands of square feet — you have to divide. It's really an urban planning problem, it's not a store fixture problem. That's why they're ridiculously boring to be in for the most part. But if they created neighborhoods within that store, if they created a village — any village — the kids usually go to one part and the older people go to another part and there are places where they overlap."
Pompei added that when consumers see the store as a series of small neighborhoods rather than one big box, they'll be much more inclined to explore, just as tourists might want to explore a small town, with young people converging on the trendy spots and more mature customers trickling into others.
It's good business sense, but Pompei can't help but lament the generation gap.
"This segmentation has created alienation. And in the end, it's boring," he said.
Travis Kircher is editor of the selfservice.org and digitalsignageassociation.org.
Photography by David Kennedy of Pixel Photography forRetail Customer Experience magazine.
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