Most Generation Z and millennial shoppers prefer to buy using their mobile device – and say using visual search technologies, best suited to smartphones and related devices, would help them to find the products they want to buy, new research suggests.
Research from visual commerce AI company ViSenze, which powers image recognition at fast fashion pureplay Asos, questioned more than 1,000 UK and US shoppers from the Gen Z and Millenial generations. Nearly half of respondents shopped online at least once a week, while 60% shopped in store more than once a week.
It found that more than 60% of respondents said they were most likely to complete transactions on their mobile device, and that nearly 80% tended to discover products via mobile while they were out and about. Almost two thirds (62%) said they would like to use visual search in order to find and identify products that they are inspired by on their mobile devices, before buying. And more than 70% said that if all digital content was shoppable, they would buy more online.
More than half (57%) of millennial shoppers said they discovered products on retailers’ websites, while 60% of generation Z shoppers find them on social. Overall, 70% of respondents said they engaged with social media platforms at least five times a day.
The data also suggests differences between the two groups when it comes to the types of product recommendations preferred: more than 80% of both groups welcome product recommendations, but 50% of Gen Z respondents prefer brands to deliver recommendations based on their own buying behavior, while 41% of Millennials prefer to be shown recommendations based on what people similar to them are interested in. In either case, over 70 percent of total respondents indicated they are likely to buy a product based on a recommendation.
“Once focused almost exclusively on appealing to Millennials, marketers have broadened the scope of their digital strategies to take Gen Z preferences into account as they are on track to become the largest generation of consumers by the year 2020, and account for $29 to $143 billion in direct spending according to Millennial Marketing,” said Oliver Tan, chief executive and co-founder of ViSenze. “Yet our research confirms that while the two consumer groups are starkly different in many ways, their shopping journeys are increasingly dominated by mobile, reaffirming the growing opportunity of shoppable content and visual search.”
Image: Fotolia
