Tis’ the season to discover what consumers are clamoring for and then sort out how to offer it! Our latest Social Media Industry Report 2019: Holiday Gifts: Gen Z & Millennial Picks shares that exact intel. It’s focused on top generational picks, and is here just in time for brands to put the finishing touches on their seasonal offerings. We have some highlights from the report to share below!
First, a bit about our methodology.
How We Do Our Voodoo
We come up with our holiday gift top picks using our proprietary scoring system. It takes into account social metrics such as mentions, net sentiment, impressions and engagements. And we’ve applied the “purchase intent” filter to these brands to identify which ones are getting the most buzz as it relates to Holiday lists this year.
We then looked to see how they perform across these key metrics:
- Mentions
- Posts
- Potential impressions
- Sentiment over the past three months leading up to the holiday season
All brands were ranked per each score, and then given a cumulative score. Brands that have a high volume of mentions have a good chance of making it to the top ten, but they also need to have high net sentiment and engagements, helping normalize the total score. Brands that lead in volume of mentions are also prone to getting more customer complaints with negative sentiment, therefore, smaller brands who might have less mentions still have the ability to make it into the top ten by doing well in sentiment and engagements.
And with these criteria in place, our powerful, best-in-class next generation AI-powered social analytics uncovered some super useful insight that applies to each subgroup!
But wait – why the focus on these two groups? Aren’t boomers and Gen X purchasing things as well? They sure are! But . . .
Why Gen Z is Top Dog
Gen Z has been largely ignored to date, and that’s a mistake. As we share in the report, “Gen Z is the demographic that marketers need to begin to pay attention to as they will command forty percent of all consumer shopping by 2020, with 93% of parents saying their Gen Z offspring influence household spending.
And Millennials are the first generation that were digital natives, so their experience is super relevant to any report on consumer buying habits. They’re the trendsetters. And they’re often our largest influencer group. Ignoring these folks would be folly for any brand, that much is accepted as fact at this point.
There are similarities with the older folks though. Let’s look at a few . . .
The More Things Change . . .
Much like their predecessors, Millennials and their younger, more digitally driven Gen Z movers and shakers appreciate a personal touch. Not only that, they expect brands to respect their values and demonstrate them in a variety of ways – supporting causes like sustainability. And they expect authentic interactions that are less focused on making a sale, but more toward understanding their needs as an individual and meeting them. Consistently.
This sets a high bar for brands from a customer experience standpoint. Their customer care really has to be second to none this holiday season – or they can expect consumers will gravitate toward a competitor who is doing it better. Second place will experience lots of avoidable loses. Don’t be that second-best choice!
So what do these crazy kids want this holiday season?
Millennial & Gen Z Wish Lists
But let’s not make the mistake of even lumping these two web and tech savvy groups together, as their needs and wants are quite distinct
Gen Z’s top pick? Airpods – hands down. And anyone who’s seen a Gen Z in the wild knows this is spot on:
And there are lots of tech and gaming focused desires fleshing out their top 15 items, including top fashion choices that brands really need to be on top of this season. What are they? Check out the report to find out!
But one super interesting tidbit we have to mention – a mini-printer made it on their wishlist. Would you have expected that? We didn’t.
Millennials Are Maturing
Millennials are growing up, and so it makes sense that their tastes will shift correspondingly. So, it follows that in contrast to the Gen Z crowd, Millennials are far more health conscious!
We’ll leave their #1 pick a mystery for you to read later, but their #2 pick is an Insta Pot. This makes sense as the group, overall, is very financially aware, as well. Couple that with being health conscious and we see a push toward making economical and nutritious meals at home. This doesn’t rule out the avocado toast crowd, but is another important facet of it. Priorities!
They’re also super interested in Fab Fit Fun boxes: The quarterly beauty and fitness box that offers full sized products feels like Christmas comes when the box arrives, according to consumers. This company has built not just a business but a community where subscribers get access to FabFitFuntv, membership perks, and inclusion into the #Fabtfitfun community.
How do they do it? We have intel in the report!
Lots of insight for brands to take away this holiday season, for sure.
And not only that – we were able to sort out additional, unexpected themes using our latest artificial intelligence offering, automated themes:
NetBase’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Studio enables us to surface themes from the conversation to better understand breakout trends that can guide strategy and provide deep insights into consumer behaviors and preferences.
Be sure to download the report to learn all about it!
