Marketers, business owners, salesmen, and anyone interested in promoting a product need to know their audience. While there are many factors that go into demographics, age is a major one.
Millennials have been the focal point for years now, but the upcoming Generation Z is quickly stealing the spotlight as professionals study how to promote goods and services to this up-and-coming generation.
Defining Gen Zers
Generational monikers, like “Generation Z,” can be hard to define. Everyone uses them differently, and they can mean slightly different things to each person.
However, Pew Research has declared the official “cut off” date for Gen Zers as 1997. Others put the date at 1996. Either way, this is a young group of adults. They’re also a big group, counting for nearly 70 million Americans according to Statista.
While Generation Z is young, that isn’t the most defining thing about them. Every generation goes through its youth. But Gen Z is the first one to do so entirely in an era dominated by technology — something that has led to their nickname as digital natives.
Now, technically, anyone who has little-to-no memory of the world without tech is considered a digital native. This means some Millennials can fall under the category.
Even so, Gen Z is the first group in its entirety to be composed of digital natives. It is the vanguard of a cohort of tech-savvy humans, and they’re using that difference-making fact to rewrite how to live life.
Ways That Digital Natives Are Disrupting the Status Quo
While there are similarities with past generations, Gen Zers are absolutely a group that march to the beat of their own drum. Just a few of the things that make this ambitious young demographic stand apart include that they’re:
- Entrepreneurially inclined: A Neilsen study reported that 54% of Gen Zers indicated that they want to start their own company. “Worth” put the number as high as 62%.
- Politically active: Gen Z is a diverse group that has their finger on the political pulse. They’re rapidly gaining a reputation as an involved and active part of the political landscape.
- Environmentally aware: With climate change staring them in the face, Gen Z has risen to the challenge. They champion environmental consciousness at every turn.
- Influencer Obsessed: Gen Zers are plugged in online. They listen to influencers from every industry and trust them as a genuine source of information.
These are just a few of the major differences. However, they help to highlight how distinctly unique this exciting young group is …and how challenging it can be for business owners to market to them.
Digital Natives Are Changing How We Buy Things
Digital natives, Gen Zers, whatever you want to call the youngest portion of the adult population, it doesn’t change the fact that they spend a lot of money. It’s estimated that they are responsible for $143 billion in spending and influence an additional $333 billion in household income each year.
Add onto that the fact that they are comfortable shopping online and rapidly becoming the majority of the population, and we forecast that online shopping will account for more than 50% of all retail sales by 2030 — that’s less than ten years from now.
If anyone running a business wants to stay in business, they need to take both digital natives and their shopping habits seriously. That’s why, at TruLife, one of our key strategies is to embrace both online and brick-and-mortar shopping at the same time.
We continue to build existing relationships with key retailers, such as Target and Vitamin Shoppe, while also focusing significant effort on building up an online presence for our clients. From comprehensive e-commerce strategies to targeted online marketing campaigns, we do everything in our power to prepare our clients for the future of retail.
That way, as Gen Zers and their digital native proclivities come to influence retail habits more and more, we’ll all be ready to meet them where they are with the best health and wellness solutions on the market.
