Planning Generation Z's Unique Shopping Experiences: The Future Envisioned by the "Youth Consumption Lab" (Part 1)

Generation Z is expected to become the next market drivers, leading consumption. It would be difficult to consider future marketing without acknowledging their presence—a generation comfortable with digital and possessing diverse values.

Organized within DENTSU PROMOTION PLUS INC., the "Youth Consumption Lab" is a planning and research unit centered around young members. With many Gen Z members themselves, it provides solutions to youth-oriented sales promotion challenges from a generational perspective. This time, we interviewed three members: Director Kyosuke Igarashi, and young members Hinano Takahashi and Kohei Saito, to learn more about the Youth Consumption Lab's initiatives.

A Planner Collective Designing Young People's Shopping Experiences

Q. Within the Youth Consumption Lab, you, Mr. Igarashi, serve as the Director. First, could you tell us what kind of team the "Youth Consumption Lab" is and the background behind its establishment?

Igarashi: While the Youth Consumption Lab now operates as a company-wide organization, it originally started around 2020 as a volunteer team within the former Dentsu Inc. Tech, initiated by a few young members. We launched it with the idea of leveraging our greatest strength – our "youth" – to establish a group of young planners.

Generation Z and Millennials are said to be the next core consumers. Furthermore, "diversity" has become a key keyword in recent years. How can we get people to buy specific products or services in this increasingly diverse society? From this perspective, we operate as a team that designs shopping experiences for young people and provides solutions to solve the sales promotion challenges companies face.

Q. I understand the team started with just a few members. What kind of members make up the team now?

Igarashi: Initially, we operated primarily with planners. However, as we gained experience across various projects, we realized that having members with diverse roles enabled us to deliver higher-value work. Now, we also have producers and creative-focused talent like art directors. Currently, we're a team of 19 members, primarily young professionals.

Within the team, responsibilities are divided into "units," currently six in total: "SNS × Retail," "Food," "Cosmetics," "Idols," "Content," and "SDGs." Food and cosmetics are consumer goods easily accessible to Gen Z, and SDGs are also a keyword inextricably linked to them. Idols and content also possess strong power that resonates with Gen Z. We arrived at these six areas by having members discuss flatly from the perspective of "What do we want to do?" and then labeling the gathered opinions. We believe they turned out to be suitable themes for the Youth Consumption Lab to handle.

Investigating Gen Z's purchasing experiences through case studies and self-analysis

Q. Mr. Saito and Mr. Takahashi, you're both in your second year at the company, which means you're part of Generation Z yourselves. What roles do you play within the Youth Consumption Lab?

Saito: As an integrated planner, I belong to the "SNS × Storefront" unit within the six units. Our challenge is "What initiatives are effective for driving traffic to storefronts?" A recent example of our work is the "SNS Purchase Self-Analysis," which is a major initiative.

SNS Purchase Self-Analysis involves me, as a Gen Z member, documenting my own experiences where SNS served as a touchpoint and actually led to a purchase. I create a sort of customer journey map. I look back on my own purchasing experiences and conduct a real analysis, thinking, "This point probably led to the purchase."

For example, here's the flow when I actually bought clothes:

① Seeing a post by an influencer I follow on SNS and thinking, "Oh, there's a brand like this?" sparking interest
② I visited the brand's account but didn't make a purchase
③ Later, I discovered the brand's clothing in a physical store
④ I made an impulse purchase on the spot, remembering the touchpoint from seeing it in a post by an influencer I follow

The key point in this flow is that people unfamiliar with the brand itself perceive "the influencer who posted" as synonymous with "the brand power of that clothing." I had no other information about the brand, but the fact that my favorite influencer was wearing it was reason enough for me to buy. Therefore, I analyzed that for certain products, displaying in-store POPs or images with captions like "Influencers are wearing this too" to link social media and the store could be effective. I regularly summarize these individual purchasing experiences in this manner to leverage them as solutions.

Q. So you're actively applying these insights to actual proposals and implementation. What kind of activities are you involved in, Ms. Takahashi?

Takahashi: I joined as an Art Director, but personally, I aim to work as both an Art Director and an Integrated Planner. Within the lab, I belong to three units: "SNS × Storefront," "Food," and "Content."

Regarding the "Food" unit, we examine actual food-related sales promotion case studies. We document their overviews, the results of the promotion's response, and the key points that resonated with young people. We diligently gather information daily to bridge this knowledge to actual projects, extracting points that can be leveraged for the next initiative. When we receive actual food-related inquiries, we leverage this input to propose promotions that resonate with young people.

Igarashi: We often get requests specifically for food-related campaigns targeting young people. Even businesses with high brand recognition as restaurants sometimes come to us with sales promotion or management challenges like "young people aren't coming" or "families aren't coming." We plan the entire journey—not just a campaign—from getting young people to visit, to making a purchase, and then ensuring they keep coming back.

The Youth Consumption Lab, composed primarily of Gen Z and Millennial members. The team's strength lies in proposing solutions to promotional challenges by capturing youth insights through their firsthand perspectives and actual experiences. In the second part, we'll delve deeper into "emotional marketing," a trend currently attracting attention from this Youth Consumption Lab.

※The information in this article is current as of the time of the interview in March 2023.