How to lure millennials

Anew wave of young, stylish, and social‑media‑savvy consumers is currently dominating the market. They are the millennials whose presence in the retail space imposes a huge challenge for companies to endear them to their brands.

According to Ria Vita Puangco, managing editor of marketing consultancy firm Kantar Added Value Philippines, it is not enough for businesses to know that millennials are now among the biggest groups of people with a high purchasing power. Companies, she said, should also understand their ability to influence other generations, especially their younger counterparts—the centennials.

“[Millenials] are not just influencing their own peers, they’re also influencing how other generations are making choices. They are going to redefine the retail space for the coming generations. They are now at 30%, but they would also be defining the [retail space] for the upcoming 40% centennials,” Ms. Puangco said during “Tetra Pak Innovation Seminar: Unpacking the Millennials,” a forum organized by food processing and packaging firm Tetra Pak on Oct. 5 at New World Hotel in Makati City.

To succeed in engaging millennials to a brand, Ms. Puangco said companies should dig deep into their market behavior.

According to her, one distinct characteristics of millennials can be observed through their physical appearance, which is immensely influenced by what they see on social media.

“Their physical appearances do not talk of one specific generation. They have the entire slew of fashion generations before them [where they] choose from and they can curate how they look based on what they feel like,” she said.

She added that they seek two kinds of experiences: virtual and actual.

With instant access to many things because of the internet, Ms. Puangco said millennials tend to become “quite impatient.”

“Everything is on‑demand now. Impatience is a by‑product of having everything at their fingertips,” she said.

People of this generation, she added, have high expectations.

“They have high expectations because the ideal is what is presented to them and they gravitate towards the ideal situations because it’s how they are also brought up,” she explained. They are also easily distracted, with their attention moving from one topic to another. But despite consuming too much information, Ms. Puangco said millennials can “process and understand these pieces of information really quickly” and “make a choice based on them.”

These traits, according to Ms. Puangco, result in their “very weak brand loyalty.”

“Social media has had these effects on the millennials, so it’s very important to anchor how we want to relate to them on very concrete things,” she said.

Ms. Puangco shared the following tips that can help companies in winning the millennials in the retail space:

Make it personal

An effective way of engaging millennials is by making products or services personal.

“Gone are the days when you’ll engage people just by [putting] products on shelf or you’re a generic supermarket where you just have white shelves and aisles,” she said.

Personalization, according to Ms. Puangco, is allowing consumers to incorporate their choices into a product. Some companies, particularly in the fashion retail segment, let their customers define how exactly they want a product look like.

Personalization can also be applied to food businesses just like in Coca‑cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign and how Project Pie and Salad Stop let their customers create their own food.

“Personalization is not just about chunking consumers into segments and then talking to each segment. [Millennials] really mean personalization,” she said.

Sell the experience

More than the actual products, millennials spend money for experience.

According to her, a theatre “has to happen within the retail space now.”

Theatre represents the physical space or the business location, stage is where exactly a product is, the directors are the brands, the actors are the actual variants, and the audience is the consumers.

Execute to win at point of sale

“Connecting with shoppers along the path to purchase is supposed to maximize your touch point impact. Influencing shoppers [in forming] their decisions at shelf should also be reliant on conversation,” she said.

She added that every platform that moves consumers across companies’ different channels is very important.

“It’s important to talk about the conversations that you’re having with them given the fact that [they are more into] visual conversations. There really needs to be a lot of thinking towards this,” she said.

Understand shopper moments

Aside from money, Ms. Puangco said, millennials have two other important resources: time and energy.

She added that millennial consumers do not randomly buy products in the market as they “go on a mission” every time they step into the retail space.

“It takes a lot of energy when things are not smooth in the retail process, so [companies] should be able to [help them] manage all these currencies,” she said.