here now to discuss how new payment technologies are helping younger generations stimulate the economy
is ceo of consulting firm brooksville gregory ing thanks so much for being here today gregory
thanks for having me so we heard this week a firm and amazon are teaming up so yet
another way this buying out pay later technology is being rolled out very
popular among younger generations whether it's millennials or gin z what do you think
is we're going to see in terms of that becoming a bigger portion of the retail economy
yeah so certainly anything or any device that retailers can use to get buyers to commit to a
purchase and to get it in their hands is certainly a great thing for retailers as a whole and what
we're seeing in a lot of generations specifically millennials and gen z is that uh we are moving
towards a fully digital wallet right and so um what what we're seeing is that that comes with
less cash less credit cards less debit cards and more uh digital payment options and so
the partnership with amazon and a firm makes total sense it creates an environment where
there's a marketplace with many different products and an opportunity to purchase things that maybe
customers cannot purchase in full right now but get in their hands right now and that is
certainly going to stimulate many areas of the economy is there any reluctance on the behalf of
retailers out there from rolling this out or is there really only upside to be gained by giving
that as an option in checkout yeah certainly we've seen that when retailers offer many uh different
ways to pay that that only helps now we understand that there are certainly technology and logistic
examples but we really believe that the the um the reward far outweighs the risk and the effort and
here's why because by truly understanding what customers want to pay and how they want to pay
this trickles down to some very impactful insights for retailers it helps us understand what is the
mindset what are the certain types of items and price points that customers maybe are aspiring to
or putting to their wish list versus ready to buy now and it also trickles down for retailers who
have brick and mortar uh presence as well as re uh online presence and how they cater their customer
experiences digitally and offline will really separate the the really forward-looking retailers
from the ones that maybe are are too reluctant to to install new types of technologies so buy now
pay later definitely disrupting the landscape and you mentioned the digital wallet we have apple now
rolling out ids even for digital wallets testing that in some states so this is only continuing to
gain gain momentum and use cases can you talk about the peer-to-peer payments and how that's
really picking up steam yeah certainly uh ben the venmos and paypals and zells of the world are
gaining a lot of steam it's gaining a lot of steam for many different reasons one it's instantaneous
two it creates a social aspect and an ability to develop a feed with comments and three
it really creates a more community environment and so what we're also seeing is that there are
some really forward-looking brick and mortar retailers who are allowing the pay pals and
the venmo purchases right at the physical cash register so this is a perfect example of retailers
saying look a dollar here is a dollar there let's really understand what these younger demographic
of buyers and brand loyalists this is the really important thing can do for us now
and how does that stimulate different initiatives digitally and offline for these brands long term
and another way younger generations are shopping is through social media whether it's instagram
through influencers or the you know the shopping capabilities that they have directly built into
that app or even now tick tock which there's shopify built in to tick-tock now as well so
social media a big way to get spending out of these younger generations yeah certainly
social media is a is a great network it's a great opportunity for brands to interact in different
ways and it's a great opportunity for brands to interact with influencers within those platforms
in different ways what is king across the board when it comes to social media as well and
especially for the millennium and millennial and um and gen z audience is authenticity it brands
need to understand that each platform is different each community is different within those platforms
and how products and commerce are introduced into the conversation needs to be genuine the
kind of radar that that younger generations have in terms of what is real and what isn't real
uh what is authentic and what isn't authentic really pays off uh when brands have a a strong
strategy and by the way that strategy can't just be lifted from the instagrams and put on tick tock
you have to have a separate strategy for tick tock a separate strategy for instagram separate
strategy for facebook and it's the combination of what they know about behavior within each of those
platforms that can fuel different ways to build your shop on the shopify platform for example on
their own com website and in their physical stores is there anything else that organizations need to
be aware of in order to better capture their target audiences given these new technologies
we discussed yeah i believe that timing is also something that should not be forgotten about
timing in terms of when a brand messages all the different options timing in terms of when uh the
brand interacts with um things that come with e-commerce right things like returns reviews
refer a friend uh shipping problems and logistics all these types of customer care options play into
the full experience that involves payment and it involves the procurement of the actual product and
and we've seen um some really interesting data that shows that millennials and gen z uh prefer
to purchase and browse in the physical store so now we have a situation where you should not put
all your eggs in the the e-commerce basket rather you should say let's acknowledge that each human
a human like down to the human level interacts with net social networks with brands online
and off in many many different ways we believe that the only way to truly address that and stay
current with this constant evolution of customer expectation is to really build a lifeblood of
making data-driven decisions and to create a a healthy curiosity and experimentation culture
so that you can evolve long-term so i really think that there's a huge opportunity here
the generations are actually sending many very specific signals about how they want to interact
with brands how they want to make purchases and how to how they want to receive products and
those that embrace that idea and truly understand and track and and almost create archaeology right
around why it's the why not the what um that's really going to set uh really innovative retailers
ahead of the curve well fascinating discussion and we really appreciate your insights today gregory
well thanks for your time and for more news on the trends you need to
know about make sure to head to investors.com for investors business daily i'm alyssa korum
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