Millennials Are Becoming A Huge Problem For Retailers

[FarCenter]

Millennials are the next generation of consumers.

But the young generation's shopping habits could present some huge issues for retailers, industry expert Robin Lewis writes on his blog.

"Every store in the world is literally in millennials’ pockets; they can hang out with their friends, sip lattes and shop online—all at the same time," Lewis writes.

As a result of the massive selection, many millennials are indecisive about purchases.

About 50% of millennials browse and research items they never intend on buying, Lewis writes, citing a study by The Intelligence Group.

The generation is also driving a decline in mall traffic.

"Why spend all the time and effort traveling to, and traipsing through, big, old, largely boring malls with a limited number of cool stores that don’t offer any great experience in the first place?" Lewis asks.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-a-huge-problem-for-retailers-2014-4

[Iris]

1. been to a mall lately?

They are like ghost towns and feel almost pre-historic

[Rhiannon12866]

18. I went to a mall awhile back, met my friend at the food court to go to a movie

I was totally astonished, only two food vendors left there, remember the days when it used to be packed with people. Where do those who work at the mall even eat?

[yeoman6987]

28. You clearly don't live in Maryland....lol

Annapolis Mall and Arundel Mills Mall are crowded beyond belief. Good luck getting a parking space after 1000 on a Saturday morning.

[AngryAmish]

34. DC is the wealthiest part of America

Yours is not representative of the country.

[Blue_Adept]

30. Most are the same

And the majority of what's in each one are clothing stores. Which yes, do appeal to a number of people, but that can go only so far.

I only end up at the local mall if I need to go to the bank and speak with a person instead of an ATM. There's nothing in the mall that appeals to me to go and see. It's all clothing and some food stuffs and jewelry. It's hugely limiting in what can go there since the rents and costs of operating in a mall are so high that you can't get good niche stores or local places going in there. It's all chain stores that you can get in any mall across the country.

[FarCenter]

37. A friend moved into a new condo and bought some stuff -- nothing from a mall

Furniture, drapes, rugs, and a variety of household furnishings. But all either at non-mall stores or on line. Some of the stuff was from big-box stores at strip malls, but these are not what most mean by malls.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I'm pushing 70, and I'm amazed

at the degree to which my behavior parallels that of the millenials.

[Lizzie Poppet]

3. I'm in the middle...and same thing!

Haven't been to a mall in a long time...

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I "window shop" (monitor shop?) all the time online.

Hardly buy anything except maybe toothpaste without reading online reviews. Have an unbecoming lust for technotoys (iPhone, iPad Mini, Macbook Air, etc.)….

[Lugnut]

21. I'm 68 and you're right!

I'd much rather window shop online and order if I need something. I probably help to keep the USPS and UPS solvent.

[IronLionZion]

25. Many products marketed to millenials

are actually being purchased more often by senior citizens. This has been the case with many small cars and SUVs, as well other stuff that is designed to be "cool" and "functional" and "affordable. There are more similarities than either group is willing to admit.

[PasadenaTrudy]

39. Me too, at 50 n/t

[Spirochete]

5. I do the same thing

and I'm 60. Good grief!

[Rex]

6. As a teenager, going to the mall was more a social function.

That was in the 80s and 90s.

[SoCalDem]

32. Malls started out as the cool place to hang out.

Stores (when I was young) were run by and staffed by OLD people who looked down their noses at young people...and the merchandise was skewed to older folks.

When discount stores & malls started out, they provided places for young people to work and shop..

That era is over now..

[winter is coming]

7. More likely, it should be "Low Disposable Income Is Becoming a Huge Problem For Retailers". n/t

[DebJ]

11. Yep. That's the real issue. n/t

[wickerwoman]

24. Bingo.

I shop online because I generally can't afford to impulse buy, replace a shoddy product or pay more than the absolute minimum.

I use online reviews to find the highest quality product I can afford and then generally order in through a price comparison website.

Plus fifty years ago when you went into a brick-and-mortar store the staff knew the products in and out and could make recommendations. Now they just hire high-school and college kids, pay them minimum wage, teach them pressure-sales tactics instead of what the products actually do and then fire them before they have enough experience to justify a higher wage.

[sendero]

29. Bingo...

.... because that is the real problem.

[hatrack]

33. Thank you!

Nail, head, meet.

[Javaman]

35. +1 nt

[IDemo]

8. The biggest mall in the state is a bit over a mile from here

I've been there maybe 3 times in the past 10 years, and I'm pushing 60.

[arikara]

10. I got bored with malls 20 years ago

same old boring stores with the same old cheap made in China stuff. And I'm sick of stuff.

[DebJ]

12. Yep. Everyone I know who is past 50 suddenly has an urge to dispose of as much

stuff as possible. Maybe because our parents have either passed on or moved to smaller housing and
we've all had our fill of cleaning up 'stuff' from that experience.

[arikara]

13. Don't I know it...

We bought some really good stuff at garage sales thinking we'd be able to resell it and make a bit towards our retirement. But nobody wants it anymore, not even good stuff. I've been decorating the garden with some of it.

[DebJ]

14. Have you tried Craigslist?

[arikara]

16. Not specifically craigslist

we have a similar locally based one that we have decent luck with. I haven't done it in awhile but we are going to make an effort to do some clearing out very soon.

[catchnrelease]

15. You hit the nail on the head there

In the past year I've helped my mom go through all of her 'stuff' before she sells her home and moves in with my brother. While she was/is not a pack rat or hoarder, she seems to have kept every piece of paper that she felt might be important. Like the receipt from the hospital when I was born....I am almost 64!!!! And before that I helped go through all of my best friends' belongings after she passed away unexpectedly and she WAS a pack rat. It took months.

So this year I'm jettisoning as much of my crap as I can, both so that I don't have so much sitting around and so my daughter doesn't have to do it later. I'm cured of collecting I think!

[DebJ]

17. Right now my garage is full of stuff that I took while cleaning out my parents' house

over the past month. But more than half of it is for a sister, my son, my daughter, my other sister,
my grand daughter and grandson, and some to be mailed to Mom and Dad at their new location
at my sister's house.
Can't wait until it gets out of there! My Dad WAS a hoarder, a 30x30 foot by 1.5 story garage and
a standing height crawl space under the entire length of a 3 bedroom home and a small office
full of stuff... junk mail from 20000 .... Before him, I cleaned up after my grandma when grandpa
died and she had to move ... she had every TV guide ever printed up to 1973, and empty bottles of
all kinds of stuff, empty cans, you name it. Took months of weekends to dispose of it.

Not fun.

After I recover, and catch up on all my regular house stuff that went to heck the past month while
driving 8 hours round trip out of state for a month every weekend to clear my Dad's stuff (like filing
my taxes), I'm spending the summer tossing much of what little I have myself. Shouldn't take more than
two days.

[catchnrelease]

20. I hear you!

I also had boxes of things sitting in my living room, garage and store room that were to be taken to the assistance league thrift store, veterans, blankets/towels for the animal shelter, waiting to be picked up by my daughter and on and on. I am looking forward to it all to be gone and what's mine to be culled and organized.

One thing that is both frustrating and funny is both my Mom and my late friend's Mom both thought so many of the things they had were valuable because they were old. These items MUST be worth money because they have been sitting around for 40 years. There were some cool things but worth like $20 bucks on ebay if that.

Or not even old--my Mom was sure her box full of bowling and golf trophies must be worth money from the recycling place because they had plastic, brass plaques (which were aluminum and worth nothing as scrap) etc. To make her happy I hauled it all to the place where it would have been worth less than $3.00 and I would have had to go back the next day to get that. (Don't ask me why they had that rule, I didn't get it.) Mom was disappointed that I didn't come back with some good $$$ for all that junk!

[flygal]

22. It's called the great Baby Boomer Sell-off

I'm slightly obsessed with it as I'm going through it with my folks. I love a lot of their stuff but we are minimalists. We move a lot and I love having a light load.

here's an article from a couple years ago that explains it very well. This should really be a thread in it's own.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-25/business/ct-met-stuffkeepers-20121125_1_boomers-heirlooms-generation

Cindi Copeland can't bear the thought of parting with the cedar hope chest her grandmother received as an engagement gift in the 1930s. She even held on to the $100 moth insurance certificate, which expired more than 75 years ago.

She cherishes the Blue Garland china her mother acquired with grocery stamps, though it has never made its way from the china cabinet to the dining room table. And she's just as fond of the nearly 1,000 slides from her grandfather's vacation in Europe a half-century ago.

[IronLionZion]

26. Agreed

When friends ask me if I want to go to the mall, I tell them why would I want to spend my hard earned money on more stuff that I don't need? I have more than enough stuff.

[JoeyT]

19. We're not indecisive, we're broke.

Researching that item they never intend to buy is the new "Looking through the window at stuff you know you'll never be able to afford".

You can't buy shit with money you don't have. Fix the job market and we'll start buying.

[a kennedy]

38. Living on a limited and small income per month. Not a lot of "spare" money any month.

We live from retirement check to retirement check, and EVERYTHING is going up, LP gas, petrol gas, electricity, cable, and our small retirement check stays the same. We just don't have any extra money. We used to eat out at least twice a week a few years ago, now we're lucky if we eat out once every other week. Just don't have the money.

[davidpdx]

23. Here in Korea online shopping is pretty much how everyone does it these days

I order stuff online and usually it comes within two days (one of the recent exceptions was a textbook that is imported that I have to wait a week for). The other major place I buy stuff is Costco.

[greymattermom]

27. Goodwill in upscale areas

My millennial daughters both shop at the Goodwill. In some upscale regions of town, like Buckhead in the Atlanta area, they have very high end clothing for $5 apiece, barely worn. If you're working part time without benefits, this is your store. They show off their new outfits at work and brag about thrift store shopping. And, they look fantastic.

[KurtNYC]

31. The days of buying "things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't know"

are over.

The retail businesses of the 1970s were built on disposable (intentionally ugly) fashion and disposable goods. As many upthread have cited, incomes are way down relative to prices and the internet has opened up peer-reviews of every product category.

The linked article also mentions that Millenials are more socially and environmentally conscious and more likely to avoid brands and good which don't match up with their values. Again, people of all ages are doing this more but it is most noticeable with Millennials. Chipotle plays to this very directly in their ads like this one:

For better or worse, the standard of living in the USA peaked in 1968. We are 46 years post-peak and now more spiritually focused; less "worldly goods" focused. So yes, people want a "memorable experience" and more retailers should figure out how to deliver it.

[chrisa]

36. Malls are now an experience, like movie theaters.

Most of the stuff in them is marked up, and you can get it cheaper online. It's more 'something to do.'