The majority of millennial shoppers prefer to spend their money in-store compared to online, despite tough trading conditions on the high street, new figures reveal.
According to the 2018 Retail Sector Report from I-AM Group, which features data from a survey conducted among 2000 18 to 35 year-olds living in a number of UK cities, 74% still prefer physical stores compared to just 26% preferring online shopping.
While a clear majority favour experiential shopping, nearly half (46%) find staff hinder shopping experience and 70% think staff should be confined to pay points.
Staff-related issues features heavily in the report with 28% of respondents saying they would happily shop without staff and 71% stating want store staff to be more knowledgeable.
I-AM Group partner, Pete Champion, said: “Both online and offline, people prefer multi-brand stores over mono-brand ones. Retail has undergone a seismic change in the last decade. Though this has been largely driven by technology, our consumer attitudes to what shopping is and does has sifted dramatically and our needs, platforms and spaces have converged. We no longer shop in specific bursts, rather shopping hums along at our pace of life.
“Retail has become a continuous chain-reaction of movements, events, experiences and motives. Shopping has become relative – relative to context, person and place and has moulded into four dimensions of space and time. Shopping is no longer about the what and where, but how and when.”
Published: 25 June 2018 on Professional Jeweller By Emma Calder