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Are Millennial Millionaires being overlooked in the digital shopping space?

This quarter, Savanta’s MillionaireVue looked at the shopping intentions for the UK’s Millionaires.

It’s no surprise that through the pandemic online shopping figures shot up, and as things return to normal in 2022 there is a narrative being driven that consumers cannot wait to get back to their pre-pandemic life and shopping habits. But is this really the case for the UK's wealthiest shoppers?

The most successful luxury brands already understand the importance of feeding shoppers with growing appetite for digital content.

Almost half (48%) of 34 – 54-year old’s admit spending a greater proportion online and rather than rushing back to store, say that they will continue to purchase digitally. Increased time at home and increased disposable income, as they were unable to spend their wealth in the usual ways, means the past two years has been a time of exploration and discovery for this audience and they plan to keep on buying from the new brands that they tried during lockdown.

Conversely, it’s the wealthy Gen Z who are beating the drum for the return to in-store shopping, with 42% planning to return to their pre Covid in-store shopping for clothes as soon as they can, compared to only 26% of 34 – 54 year olds.

The most successful luxury brands already understand the importance of feeding shoppers with growing appetite for digital content, however with much of this activity specifically designed to capture Gen Z, are brands missing out on winning a huge chunk of digital spend from this slightly older audience?

How can brands make sure they are factoring the high spend of Millennials and Gen Y in their digital approaches?

  1. Firstly, don’t forget to be where the Millennials are, whilst Gen Z are busy viewing and creating TikToks, Millennials and Gen Y remain faithful natives of the Facebook and Instagram generation. So, ensuring a solid brand presence across all social media platforms is essential in building trust and a connection with Millennials. This should be the backbone of any of your digital engagements with this audience.
  2. When it comes to retail, experience is everything and that experience needs to translate to a truly luxurious experience online. One example of a brand making waves online is Yeezy. Creator Kanye West tasked his creative team to deliver an online experience that was unique and different, and they developed a design with no straight lines, completely multidimensional, and with different colours. It also features model avatars of all different shapes and sizes to allow you to ‘try out’ clothing with people that actually look like you. Whilst this is very much at the leading edge of digital design, it will provide a fantastic case study of what is possible when you approach website design from an experience rather than retail perspective.
  3. Finally, make it worth their while to come into store every once in a while! Instore experience can be heightened by treating your retail stores as creative spaces for audiences to connect and interact with your brand in completely different ways.

Luxury brands are already taking concept stores to the next level, this year we saw Burberry unveil the Spring / Summer 2022 collection by transforming its flagship store on Rodeo Drive into an immersive celebration of imagination, based on Chief Creative Officer Riccardo Tisci’s presentation ‘Animal Instinct’, inspired by the idea of shifting between infinite possibilities of fantasies and realities.

Shoppers love the showmanship of such occasions and as they become more common place, expectations will continue to rise, as will opportunities for brands to wow.

Savanta’s MillionaireVue is a quarterly omnibus with c. 500 HNWI’s in each of UK, US, and China. For more information please click here.

To find out more about the work our wealth & luxury team do, or to speak to one of our wealth specialists, please click here

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