Millennials choosing bricks over clicks, I-AM survey

74% of UK Millennials still prefer stores to online shopping, according to research by I-AM involving 2,000 people.

Other key findings: 51% would love to navigate, get information and pay using their phone in-store; 46% think staff hinder the shopping experience, but 48% still value help; 71% want store staff to be more knowledgeable; 77% are open to the idea of handing over data in exchange for discounts; 56% would like their Click and Collect point to offer them a space to try on clothes and facilitate their returns and refunds; and 49% say the most loved element of the in-store experience is touching and trying things out.

“Both online and offline, people prefer multi-brand stores over mono-brand ones,” says I-AM Group Partner, Pete Champion. “Retail has undergone a seismic change in the last decade. Though this has been largely driven by technology, our consumer attitudes to what shopping is and does has shifted dramatically and our needs, platforms and spaces have converged. We no longer shop in specific bursts, rather shopping hums along at our pace of life.”

“Retail has become a continuous chain reaction of movements, events, experiences and motives. Shopping has become relative – relative to context, person and place and has moulded into four dimensions of space and time. Shopping is no longer about the what and where, but how and when,” he concludes.