Crosstab Overall Trends by Age Bands

Online shopping’s rate of growth is slowing.
     Transactis tracked the purchases of 39 million consumers across 205 brands of fashion items, household goods, children’s merchandise, home furnishings, and more. During the first half of 2011, growth in online shopping was about 14%—well below a 58% takeoff in 2007 and 35% increase in 2008. Between 2006 and 2010, online spending grew more than 173%. For 2010 looked at on its own, the climb was only 8%.
     Transactis experts predict that online purchasing will continue to grow, but at a substantially slower pace than in the past. This is important for store-based retailers to understand as they confront the shopper’s question, “Can you beat the internet price?”
     Still more value comes for the retailer who slices and dices the data by age band. How quickly is online shopping changing for people of different ages? Part of the answer is that online shopping climbed 46% for consumers ages 18-24 between 2009 and 2010, it climbed only 3% for ages 55-64, stayed flat for those 65-74, and actually dropped 4% for those at least age 75.
     By crosstabbing the data in this way, we gain a better understanding of why the trend is occurring and therefore, how we can stay ahead of the trend. In this case, it appears that the growth has come largely from young adult consumers. As the average age of the consumer population increases notably, we can expect to see a slowing in the growth rate for online purchases.
     People will still purchase on the web. TechCrunch says 7% of total U.S. retail sales this year will be made online. That percentage will continue to grow, but not as quickly. The prediction for 2014 is that 8% of retail sales will be made online. Bricks-and-mortar retailers have plenty of market share to divide up by showing older consumers the advantages of coming on into the store.
     Reaching down further than young adults’ ages, crosstabbing trends by age range can spot emerging retailing opportunities. For instance, look to children’s toys and games. Children are a future market, with their high potential to remain or become primary customers in five to fifteen years. They’ll bring with them some of their attitudes as they move from kiddy playthings to teen and adult playthings.
     And before this happens, children are an influence market, giving suggestions to the adults on what to purchase.

Click below for more:
Look to Toys & Games for Retailing Trends