Well, it was bound to happen.
Apparently, senior citizens in the UK are starting to get more comfortable with the digital world and are going online for at least some of their shopping. On top of that, attitudes among the silver set toward shopping online indicate that this kind of behavior is destined to become even more common.
True, shoppers in the UK still see the “brick and mortar” store as their primary shopping channel. Even among internet users, in-store shopping is popular — particularly so for seniors.
According to March, 2014 polling by Retail Week in association with BT (British Telecom), 54.6 percent of UK internet users ages 55 and up shopped, for the most part, in-store.
But times are changing.
According to eMarketer, more UK seniors are saying they’re using digital more in their shopping endeavors. For instance, 14.8 percent of over-54s said they researched online and then bought in-store, vs. 19.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds.
Recent research (January 2014) for VoucherCodes.co.uk discovered that seniors seemed much less leery of online shopping than their younger cohorts. In fact, a larger proportion of UK internet users 55 and older said that nothing held them back from shopping online — 43 percent — in contrast to the 32 percent of millennials who had reservations.
