Although most consumers did their Black Friday shopping online this year, new research shows young shoppers were most likely to head into physical stores, suggesting their fear of COVID-19 was dwarfed by their desire to get out of the house and shop.
A total of 60 percent of young shoppers headed into Walmart, and 42 percent visited Target. Other traditional retailers making the in-store list included Kohl’s (23.2 percent) Macy’s (18.7 percent) and Nordstrom (9.2 percent).
The findings were released Monday (Nov. 30) in PYMNTS latest consumer research and show Generation Z shoppers, or those under age 23, were most likely to shop the old-fashioned way. In the case of Walmart, nearly 73 percent of Gen Z consumers said they went to Walmart, compared to just 48 percent of baby boomers, who range in age from 56 to 74.
For Target, the in-store age gap was even more pronounced, as PYMNTS data showed 60 percent of Gen Z shoppers visited a Target versus only 15 percent of baby boomers.
When broken down by income levels, ($50,000, $50,000-$100,000, and $100,000+) Walmart notably saw an equal distribution of roughly 60 percent from each of the three groups shopping in store, while Target saw 47 percent in the top income bracket that ratchets down to just 30 percent in the lowest income level.
Overall, the physical-digital divide was evenly split when it came to buying more routine items whose quality was similar, regardless of where they were purchased. Fifty-six percent of Black Friday clothing purchases were made in store this year, while 53 percent were made online, for example.
Shoppers also bought health and beauty products in similar numbers in store and online, with 29 percent of shoppers who bought such products on Black Friday in store and 27 percent having bought them online. This shows that consumers generally saw online purchasing as a viable substitute for brick-and-mortar shopping, with the exceptions of a few key items.
As for the particular products that got people to head into stores, 56 percent of brick-and-mortar buyers said they bought clothing, while nearly 30 percent said they bought toys, electronics, health products or jewelry. The study also showed lagging overall consumption of sporting goods (19 percent), books (17 percent), home office equipment (12 percent), tool/garden (11 percent) and auto parts (8 percent).
On the flip side, only 6.6 percent of consumers said they shopped from a direct-to-consumer (D2C) website, while less than 5 percent of respondents said they visited the website of a locally owned business. The shopper survey also found that 30 percent of young consumers below age 23 were about 10 times as likely to visit Nike.com, as their parents and grandparents.
The findings come in a year where overall in-store Black Friday shopping saw a major decline versus strong gains for online merchants.
Among the online merchants, PYMNTS data showed 75 percent of survey respondents clicked on Amazon, 43 percent on Walmart.com and 23 percent said they shopped at Target.com. On an age and income level, Amazon saw almost 90 percent of consumers aged 25 to 40 visiting its site, including roughly 80 percent of households with income above $100,000.
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