Gen Zers headed to actual stores for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals this year, as they look for unusual gifts in both independent and mainstream stores.
According to a survey from Brainly, a peer-to-peer learning community for students, parents and teachers, nearly half (47%) of Gen Z shoppers this Black Friday and Cyber Monday headed to traditional brick-and-mortar stores to purchase gifts for the holiday season.
“It’s interesting this younger generation, unlike millennials before them, want to unplug, step out from behind screens and have traditional shopping experiences,” says Bill Drolet, vice president of sales at Brainly. “It’s important to note these habits now, because this formidable block of consumers have already been entrusted by their parents to make important purchasing decisions-including where, when and how they want to shop.”
While the move back to physical locations is good news for traditional retailers, DTC and online brands can still share in the attention from younger consumers – they aren’t trading in their digital shopping habits just yet.
According to the survey of 1,500 Gen Z respondents, 50% will still do some form of shopping online during this period. And, perhaps somewhat surprising, online purchases are evenly split between mobile and desktop – 50% of those that indicated they would purchase items online planned on doing so from their desktop computers.
Gen Zers say that fashion and electronics are tops when it comes to purchasing gifts, (34% and 34% respectively), with Walmart (16.3%) and Amazon (16.2%) being the most popular spots to buy gadgets, followed by Best Buy and Apple Stores. When it comes to ‘big box’ stores Walmart is king (16.5%), followed by Amazon and Target tied at 14%.
For fashion items, Gen Z prefers to spend their cash at Forever 21 (13.6%), H&M (11.8%) and Urban Outfitters (11.1%). And itis most often cash they use, with a third of Gen Zers using cash to buy their holiday goods, followed by debit cards (21.1%), gift cards (19.8%), credit cards (18%), and payment apps (9%).
