What Products Do Baby Boomers Buy?
Understanding your target audience’s preferences is one key task entrepreneurs should take on when starting a business. It allows you to create a more effective sales and marketing strategy and grow your business.
If you’re selling products catering to an older generation, such as those between their late-50s to mid-70s, knowing baby boomers’ spending habits and consumer behavior can come in handy. So what products do baby boomers buy in physical stores and online?
What products do baby boomers buy in physical stores?
Results from a recent survey on baby boomer spending habits show that the top items this demographic acquires in physical stores are groceries and pharmaceutical products. More than three in four (77%) baby boomers (defined as those aged 57 to 75) say they buy groceries in-store, rather than online, and 62% say they do the same with pharmaceutical products.
This is followed by clothing and shoes and home and garden products, which just over half of the surveyed baby boomers (53% and 52%, respectively) say they buy in a brick-and-mortar store. Beauty-related items round out the top five types of products boomers prefer to purchase in physical stores, with 47%.
Here are the other products boomers buy in-store and the percentage of them that do so:
- Automobile parts or accessories: 46%
- Jewelry and accessories: 41%
- Electronics: 39%
- Leisure, sport, and hobby: 37%
- Children products: 30%
- Entertainment: 28%
What do baby boomers buy online?
Results from the same survey on baby boomer consumer behavior paint an entirely different picture when it comes to their online spending habits. Percentage-wise, there are much fewer baby boomers acquiring products over the internet across all categories.
Electronics are the most popular products boomers acquire online. Even then, just 27% of them do so. This is followed by the entertainment and clothing and shoes categories, with 25% and 20%, respectively.
Products from all other categories are bought online by fewer than one in five baby boomers surveyed:
- Leisure, sport, and hobby: 16%
- Pharmaceutical products: 15%
- Beauty: 15%
- Groceries: 12%
- Automobile parts or accessories: 12%
- Home and garden: 11%
- Children products: 11%
- Jewelry and accessories: 10%
Baby boomer spending habits are a stark contrast to that of millennials. For instance, millennial online shopping statistics show that the products least millennials buy online are groceries and those related to home and garden. But even then, as many as 29% of them do so.