New Euclid Survey Reveals The Key to Millennial Shoppers’ Hearts is Through Brick and Mortar, Not Online

By Sudipto Ghosh On Oct 25, 2018

Brick And Mortar Retailers Can Turn the Tables on Amazon This Holiday Shopping Season by Focusing on What They Know Best: Their Stores and Shoppers

Euclid, the leading data platform for offline attribution and visitor retargeting, revealed counterintuitive results of a new survey: this holiday season, retailers can expect younger generations to be more drawn to their physical stores while older generations gravitate online. Retailers can put a stake in the ground this holiday season by tailoring these different experiences to appeal to these generations.

Millennials Will, on Average, Shop up to 14 Percent More Than Their Gen X and Baby Boomer Counterparts on Black Friday and Thanksgiving

At the time of this announcement, Brent Franson, CEO of Euclid, said, “Let’s face it: Amazon is unquestionably the king of online, no matter the season.”

Brent added, “But physical retailers can flip the script during the holiday shopping season by doing what Amazon can’t: engaging with customers in an experiential way. Brick and mortar should push hard on those big in-store days – Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the day after Christmas – to make the biggest dent.”

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Based on a survey of 1,500 US-based consumers, Euclid’s 2018 Holiday Shopping Report: How Brick-and-Mortar Retailers can Turn the Tables on Amazon, outlines consumers’ shopping behavior and preferences around the holiday shopping season. Top retailers across the country, including Barnes & Noble, Costco, and Dillards, have already indicated plans to close on Thanksgiving this year. Yet the Euclid survey found that Thanksgiving (30 percent), Black Friday (28 percent) and the day after Christmas (28 percent) are likely to be the busiest days for all respondents shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

This holiday season, Millennials are the most surprising generation of shoppers. Although almost half of all respondents report shopping in a brick-and-mortar retailer at least once a week or more, Millennials take the bigger slice of the pie, shopping in-store more than any other generation. According to the survey, Millennials will, on average, shop up to 14 percent more than their Gen X and Baby Boomer counterparts on Black Friday and Thanksgiving.

Conversely, the majority of respondents plan to spend as much as three-quarters of their entire shopping budget at an online marketplace like Amazon. Of those who plan to shop at Amazon this holiday season, they intend to spend more than half (56 percent) of their total budget at the online retailer.

Given these generational trends, brick-and-mortar retailers should take advantage of their most valuable asset this holiday season: their physical stores. Respondents across all generations ranked the ability to reserve item(s) online for in-store purchase at a later time (35 percent) and the ability to buy-online-pickup-in-store (34 percent) as equally important when thinking about which brick-and-mortar stores they would rather shop at this holiday season. 21 percent of Millennial shoppers almost always purchase an item online after seeing it in the store. 42 percent overall choose to shop online with a brand if they offer the option to pick up online purchases in-store.

“Amazon is steadily growing its real-world footprint, with good reason,” said CEO Brent Franson.

Brent added, “63 percent of Millennials and 55 percent of Gen Xers are excited by the notion of Amazon stores near them. If Amazon can harness that excitement and build on the loyalty these generations already show online, they will be virtually unbeatable. But if other physical retailers move now, with exceptional experiences and convenient services, they can also succeed.”

Euclid illuminates identity and behavior in the physical world. Today’s mobile-first customer provides the opportunity to recognize every visitor who walks in the door, understand what drove that visit and retarget to influence a purchase. Marketers from the leading retail and restaurant brands rely on Euclid’s data platform to better reach, inspire and serve their customers, increasing their lifetime value in the process.

Currently, Euclid’s growing offline network captures hundreds of millions of monthly visits from over one billion unique devices across tens of thousands of locations. Euclid is backed by leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and NEA, as well as Cox Enterprises and Groupe Arnault, the controlling shareholder of LVMH – Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world leader in luxury products.