Over two-thirds of millennials and members of Gen Z have purchased or used a new brand since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, a total significantly higher than for older consumers.

Patrick Kemp, the senior manager/marketing science research at Snap Inc., the owner of messaging app Snapchat, discussed this subject at the Advertising Research Foundation’s (ARF) 2020 SHOPPERxSCIENCE online event.

And he reported that 69% of Gen Z and millennial consumers have bought or used a new brand since the crisis began – a total hitting 43% for other generations and indicating a key point of difference

Thirteen percent of the younger cohorts, Kemp continued, had made their first-ever online purchase in at least one category during the pandemic.

“We’re seeing that younger people jumped into categories that, absent COVID, they probably would have bought offline,” he said (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: What COVID-19 habits do Gen Z and millennials expect to endure beyond the pandemic).

The new e-commerce purchase impulse, in fact, has even expanded to include pieces of furniture and new cars. “They’re jumping into the online space for the first time ever in some big-ticket categories,” Kemp added.

Smaller-ticket items may witness an uptick in demand, too, he continued. And that list contains various offerings that have become entrenched in daily life as a result of the coronavirus.

“People expect to spend more [online] on packaged food and beverages, more on household products, more on health and personal hair products for the foreseeable future,” Kemp said.

These results were drawn from a survey commissioned by Snap and conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the management consultancy, in May 2020.

More specifically, this survey involved more than 9,500 consumers – all 16 years old and over – in the United States, Canada, the UK and France.

And it also found that 58% of Gen Z and millennials have increased their time on online media, versus 42% for other generations.

Similarly, 50% of Gen Z and millennials have increased the amount of streaming video they watch on mobile phones, falling to 18% for the other age-groups.

“The implications for marketers are to meet these younger consumers where they are, and likely where they will remain, which is online and on their mobile devices,” Kemp said.

Sourced from WARC