Data: Younger Shoppers Gravitate Towards Convenience Stores
Convenience stores continue to be the retailer of choice for younger consumers who are visiting their local C-store on a daily basis, according to figures from Convenience Store News’ 2023 Shopper Study.
Slightly more than one-quarter of respondents in the Gen Z demographic and 31% of Millennials said they are shopping at their favorite convenience store each day. By comparison, 23% of survey respondents in Generation X and only 10% of baby boomers make stopping at a C-store at least once a day a regular part of their routine.
Interestingly, figures for weekly visits are much more equal across the four generations. Slightly less than half (49%) of Gen Z respondents and 48% of Millennials said they shop at their local C-store at least once a week, with 51% of Gen X respondents and 48% of baby boomers saying they pay a visit to their favorite convenience store at least once a week.
With a high frequency of daily visits reported by younger consumers, they also acknowledged visiting convenience stores more frequently compared to one year ago. One-third of Gen Z respondents (33%) and 30% of millennials said they visited convenience stores more frequently in the past year, compared to 17% of Gen X respondents and 8% of baby boomers who were surveyed.
For younger shoppers, energy drinks, bottled water (still), salty snacks, sweet snacks and snack packs are among the most popular items to purchase at convenience chains.
By comparison, only 14% of Gen Z shoppers and 13% of Millennial consumers said they visited a grocery store daily. When asked about daily visits to a drug store, 14% of those in Gen Z said yes, but only 7% of Millennials made a daily stop at their local drug store. Daily trips to supercenters/mass merchants by these two key groups were inline with grocery stores as 13% of Gen Z and 12% of Millennials respectively saying they shopped daily at retailers in this channel of distribution.