Do Millennials Feel "Expensive" Means "Quality"?
We all know the story - Millennials are more health-conscious than their Baby Boomer and Gen X parents. And they appear to be willing to pay more for what they perceive to be better. And if this is the case, would raising your prices cause them to perceive you as even better?Seltzers, one of the quintessential millennial things, are a great example. Spindrift brands itself as the “real drink companion to real food”. They are made with real squeezed fruit juice from fruit grown on family farms. They also give 1% of their sales to environmental organizations as members of 1 Percent For The Planet- a network of businesses committed to supporting a healthy natural environment. La Croix also has a variety of different flavors, and brand themselves for fun-loving millennials. But they don’t talk about where the ingredients come from or how they are supporting the environment.At the end of 2018, Nielsen released a report that said up to 73 percent of millennials are willing to pay more for sustainable goods and that the sustainability market is supposed to reach $150 billion by 2021. Millennials are looking at products with greater scrutiny and it is starting to be normal to think critically about where things come from and whether the company you’re buying from is a responsible corporate citizen. So the research shows people are willing to not only prioritize, but to pay more for products that are healthier for the world, and we’re seeing people choosing things that appear healthier for their bodies as well.We checked in with our research tool, I-Factor, which measures the irresistibility of a brand based on if consumers understand, crave, and share the brand using real-time social listening. I-Factor confirms that consumers prefer products that present themselves as clean and healthy. In this case, LaCroix scores a 26, while Spindrift comes in much higher at 37, even though a 24 pack of cans is actually twice the price. The more expensive, the more millennials will think the product is good for themselves and the environment. That is great news for brands.More evidence that Millennials are willing to pay more are brands like Jeni's Ice Cream. Jeni’s uses direct and fair trade ingredients in all of its ice cream and complicated methods for making the ice cream “that requires a lot of precision, but it’s worth it”. For example, to create their Salted Caramel flavor they actually caramelize sugar in a kettle over fire. But one pint of their ice cream is $12, compared to about $5.50 for another premium ice cream brand like Ben and Jerry's. Ben and Jerry’s is a B-Corp itself, meaning it meets the highest standards for corporate social responsibility, but they talk less about the quality of the ingredients going into their ice cream and more about the flavors and social movements they are supporting. Does this make a difference to the health-conscious millennial? According to I-Factor, yes. Jeni’s comes in with an I-Factor score of 30, while Ben and Jerry’s has a score of 20, demonstrating that people are willing to spend more than two times as much for a product they perceive to be higher quality.Do you need help figuring out how to connect with the quality and sustainability-conscious millennials? We can help. Let’s talk.