Sprinting into Digital Commerce: Understanding Your Shopper Expectations

Regional and Generational Differences: Two Aspects to Consider

When it comes to customer experience, retailers’ top concerns are attracting new customers, understanding and supporting new buying behaviors, and maintaining loyalty.

Consumer expectations vary across demographics, making it critical for enterprises to ensure their experience is tailored to the right audience.

Regional Differences in Consumer Shopping Behaviors

Consumer shopping behavior trends can vary across different regions owing to several key factors. These include shipping, product selection, and security issues. In fact, 53% of U.S. consumers list shipping as their main concern when shopping online, with fast shipping and free returns being their main priorities.¹

A poor shipping experience drives customer frustration and abandoned carts, and lost sales can result if these issues are not addressed. Among the main factors that frustrate U.S. customers when it comes to shipping are not knowing what the final cost will be before getting to the checkout page (34%) and a lack of inventory availability and visibility (36%).¹

In order to enhance the customer experience and meet consumer shopping preferences in all regions, businesses need to prioritize the right investments. Currently U.S. businesses are focusing on customer service (41%), security of payment data, brand trust, and faster shipping (all 33%) to improve online shopping experiences for customers across the country. ¹

In addition, retailers should work hard to provide customers with their ideal checkout experience by offering a range of payment methods. Currently, the most trusted payment processing solutions are credit cards (56%), debit cards (39%), and digital wallets (36%).¹ However, payment methods such as buy now, pay later are proving to be increasingly popular with younger consumers.

Generational Differences in Shopping Experiences

There are generational differences in terms of trust of payment types that can offer meaningful gains for businesses. For example, 50% of Gen Zers rate the customer/shopping experience as a key element of online shopping, compared to just 33% of Baby Boomers.¹ Conversely, 52% of Baby Boomers are most concerned about the security of their payment data, compared to just 38% of Gen Zers.¹

There are generational differences in consumer behavior demographics in terms of payments too, with 45% of both Millennials and Gen Z using digital wallets, compared to just 30% of Baby Boomers. ¹ For QR code payments the figures are 23% for Gen Z and Millennials and only 8% for Baby Boomers.¹

Know Your Customer

To get ahead of competition, enterprises need to know their shoppers well enough to meet their individual preferences throughout the shopping journey. To attract, convert, and retain digital shoppers:

• Understand what shoppers want, based on demographic and geographic preferences.

• Focus on areas where niche customer preferences are not being met, and make investments accordingly.

• Identify gaps between ecommerce offerings and consumer preferences that have the most impact on revenue, and make the appropriate adjustments.

Put the world of PayPal to work for you

PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than 20 years. By leveraging technology to make financial services and commerce more convenient, aordable, and secure, the PayPal Platform is empowering more than 400 million active accounts and businesses in more than 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. Through a combination of consumer engagement tools, innovation, and strategic partnerships, our platform creates better ways to manage and move money, and oers flexibility with modular, enterprise-grade solutions.

Gain valuable recommendations from IDC that help enterprises understand what shoppers want, focus on areas where niche customer preferences are not being met to make investments accordingly, and identify gaps between e-commerce offerings and consumer preferences that have the most impact on revenue to make the appropriate adjustments.

Download our Sprinting into Digital Commerce PDF to learn more about the effect of demographic factors on consumer behavior.