NewsWire: 1/23/21
- Americans age 65 and older are the fastest-growing age group of online shoppers, according to the NPD Group. Boomers and Silent have shifted much of their weekly errands online, and many don’t plan to go back once the pandemic is over. (The Washington Post)
- NH: Online shopping has surged in popularity among Americans of all ages during the pandemic. But the surge has been largest among an oft-overlooked demographic: people over 65.
- Consumers 65 and older, on average, spent $1,615 online from January through October 2020, which is 49% more than the year before. This makes them the fastest-growing age bracket of online shoppers, according to NPD Group’s Checkout Tracking. Frequency of purchases, meanwhile, grew more than 40%. Older people have become avid users of the grocery delivery service Instacart: Shoppers who are 60+ order groceries 25% more frequently than their younger peers and spend 35% more on household items like cleaning products.
- Retailers say they’ve been surprised by how quickly older consumers have taken to online shopping. But I’m not. I’ve long urged marketers to pay more attention to Boomers and Silent, who are much more powerful consumers than most people think.
- They have the spending power (see “The Graying of Wealth”), the multiple credit cards, the big houses with space to store bulk purchases--and yes, for the most part, the know-how. Contrary to stereotype, the majority of Boomers are comfortable with technology; most own mobile devices and learned to use computers by their 30s. In the comments to this article, there are plenty of Boomers bristling over the implication that their generation isn’t tech-savvy. “Who do you suppose built the internet you find yourselves using?” the top commenter grumbled.
Did You Know?
- What’s in a Baby Name? The Social Security Administration has not yet released its list of the most popular baby names for 2020. But as The New York Times notes, if online trends are any indication, parents-to-be during the pandemic are taking one of two routes for naming their kids: selecting names with optimistic meanings, or sticking to the classics. BabyNames.com, for instance, has seen interest surge in the names of gods and goddesses, such as Athena, Persephone, and Adonis. Biblical names like Gabriel and Naomi, which had lost favor in recent years as parents gravitated to more creative names, have also made a comeback. As always, current events and trends are also serving as a source of inspiration (and caution): According to the website BabyCenter, more parents are naming their girls Kamala—and fewer Karen or Corona. The popularity of the once-trendy name Alexa has also declined sharply, no doubt because it’s also the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant.
