Temu, Shein and Amazon may be touted as Gen Z favorites, but in actuality, other generations have dethroned the Zoomers’ purported position as the e-commerce apps’ top fans.
New data from Numerator shows that the most likely Temu shoppers are Millennials and Gen Xers, not Gen Zers. Compared with the average consumer, Temu shoppers are 22 percent more likely to be Millennials and 18 percent more likely to be Gen Xers.
Seven in 10 Temu shoppers are also repeat buyers; the average person buying items from Temu drops $247 annually on the ultra-low-priced goods, and spends that amount over an average of six orders.
Even though Temu has begun to create repeat purchase behavior among its customers—perhaps by incentivizing them to shop with extra coupons and a gamified experience—Amazon still outpaces the average spend and frequency by several orders of magnitude.
Numerator data shows that more than eight in 10 U.S. households made an Amazon purchase between June 2023 and June 2024; in that same period, those households had an average spend of over $2,700 over the course of, on average, 71 orders. The average Amazon spend outpaces Temu by more than 10 times.
Though some of the online shopping discourse points to Gen Zers as the primary culprits of making purchases from fast-fashion sites, data shows that’s not quite the case.
Like Temu, the bulk of Amazon’s shoppers are Millennials or Gen Xers. Those two generations appear to be shouldering much of the e-commerce spending fueling today’s retail landscape. Data from UBS Securities shows Shein doesn’t deviate from that trend; the average Shein customer is 35 years old.
The data around the average annual spend among those Shein shoppers is lacking, but the UBS report shows that the average Shein shopper spends approximately $100 monthly on women’s clothing, which outpaces most U.S. shopper’s spending by 60 percent. If even one-fifth of that clothing spend heads into Shein’s pockets, that means Shein’s shoppers’ spend on the platform would be at parity with the average spend among Temu shoppers. The two have been butting heads for several years now; they compete against one another in a highly saturated market.
But generational demographics are far from the only segments defining those shopping on Temu. Numerator’s data shows Temu shoppers are 10 percent more likely to live in rural areas than the average shopper. Earlier this year, Temu quietly set up logistics capabilities in the U.S.—likely positioned both to skirt potential legislative changes around de minimis and to provide faster shipping to keep up with Amazon, experts said. Having stateside infrastructure encouraging quicker-turnaround shipping may be appealing to rural shoppers who sometimes face longer delivery times than their urban and suburban counterparts. Shein has gotten in on the fun by tapping Flexport for U.S. logistics.
Amazon, too, which has logistical prowess that supersedes both of its growing e-commerce rivals, has recognized that rural delivery is lacking—it has started to use small businesses to deliver packages quicker in rural areas, at least in part to make good on its Prime delivery promises.
Though Temu and Shein aren’t considered social commerce in the same way as a service like TikTok Shop would be, they still benefit from social media. Numerator’s data shows nearly half of Temu shoppers said they learn about products and brands through social media platforms. Nearly four in 10 of them use TikTok, making them 40 percent more likely than other consumers to find products on the video-sharing app.
Though changes to the de minimis policy in the U.S. could change Temu and Shein’s respective strategies, they seem to have established a foothold among American consumers. That may only be bolstered by a growth in spending among Millennials, both platforms’ key buyers.
PwC data shows Millennials will likely spend 22 percent more this holiday season than they did last year. Gen Z, too, is expected to up the ante on their spending power, while Gen X is expected to spend 9 percent less year on year and Baby Boomers are projected to spend 6 percent less than they did in 2023.
That in mind, Temu and competitors may soon look to Gen Z for further growth to close out 2024. Salesforce projects that Shein and Temu, which it calls “Chinese shopping apps” because of the two companies’ ties to the country and its manufacturers, will come out of the holiday season victorious, with the potential to capture 21 percent of the total holiday spend.
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