With an estimated purchasing power of $2.45 trillion worldwide by 2015, it's no surprise that the millennial generation (demographic cohort born between 1980 and 2000, also known as Gen Y) has become the most sought-after target segment for Internet retailers. But retailers are particularly interested in millennial women, who bring in the highest volume of referral traffic to their e-commerce stores.
Picture the ever-connected millennial female clicking a selfie with that latest red shoe she purchased online and sharing it with hundreds of friends on Facebook and Pinterest. Retailers are leaving no stone unturned in encouraging these women to share their purchases on social media, because these socially shared purchases are bringing 3.77 referral clicks back to the e-commerce stores. What's surprising is that Gen Y males have 27.11% more purchases than females, but millennial females generate 52.63% higher referral traffic to e-commerce stores than their male counterparts.
The super-social-savvy millennial generation is a very valuable asset for retailers. Millennials with more than 900 Facebook friends generate as much as 5.75 clicks per socially shared purchase for e-commerce stores. This number drops to 1.45 referral clicks for millennials with less than 100 Facebook friends.
These numbers are from a study of social purchase sharing behavior of millennial on social commerce platform of ShopSocially. This infographic gives a graphical representation of this study.