There are more than 75 million Millennials in the U.S.1, and, whether they’re graduating from high school or college, many are facing the challenges of adjusting to adulthood. For instance, learning to cook. In college, life is chaotic, and students look for quick and cheap meals. When they begin to find time for normal meals and a budget for groceries in postgrad life, they look for new food options.
An important go-to tool for surviving these changes: mobile apps. Forty-one percent of Millennials own smartphones (according to Warc.com), making this fertile ground for brands and retailers to speak to this generation and reach them in transition. Back to the cooking conundrum—apps with recipes and cooking tips not only resonate but encourage the overlap of online and offline behavior. Before heading to the grocery store, many Millennials (myself included) look up recipes on mobile apps and use them to create shopping lists. My personal favorite is Epicurious®. Though I don’t always stick to my list, I continue to reference my phone as I walk through the aisles of my local grocery store. Knowing that Millennials are mobile-dependent, I ask this question: Why aren’t more brands taking advantage of this space and catering to my subconscious need to make impulse purchases?
As the number of smartphone users continues to rise, and not just among Millennials, marketers must take notice that shoppers’ offline and online worlds coexist. For more about bridging the online and offline shopping gap, you can click here to download the Digitail® edition of The Checkout.
-Contributed by Molly Paskal
1 Iconoculture 2010, General Market Fast Facts
