Boomers and Seniors Keep Subscription Merchants in Business

Despite baby boomers’ and seniors’ reputation for lagging behind other generations when it comes to digital activities and transactions, this demographic showed a modest increase in their retail subscriptions this year while others pulled back.

Despite general macroeconomic headwinds, the share of baby boomers and seniors subscribing to a retail subscription rose from 9.4% to 9.8% between February and April this year, according to research for “Subscription Commerce Readiness Report: The Loyalty Factor,” a PYMNTS and sticky.io collaboration.

Additional research for the same report noted that, during the same period, the average number of subscriptions among baby boomers and seniors also increased from 1.1 to 1.3. This was despite an overall drop in average subscriptions from 2.9 per consumer to 2.6 between February and April, representing the lowest levels since February 2021.

Whether this increased number of subscriptions indicates increased spend on subscriptions by baby boomers and seniors is unclear. The report found the most popular retail subscription service across age groups is Amazon’s Subscribe & Save, so this increase by baby boomers and seniors could be a cost-cutting move. This would be consistent with other savings strategies this demographic has leaned into as inflation continues to strain budgets, even as it shows signs of slowing.

At the same time, however, baby boomers and seniors are consistently the age demographic with the lowest share of consumers living paycheck to paycheck and the highest average savings cushion. Other PYMNTS research noted that 48% of baby boomers and seniors worldwide can be categorized in the “digital mainstream,” — or consumers who value digital features that provide product insights and make shopping easier — only a few points behind the 51% of both Generation X and millennials who are in this category.

Baby boomers and seniors have seen the largest increase in the share working remotely across age demographics in recent months, also indicating increased connectivity. Given this increase, along with maintaining a more comfortable financial lifestyle compared to other age cohorts on average, the increase in subscriptions could indicate that baby boomers and seniors are flexing some of their digital spending power.

Baby boomers’ and seniors’ rising rate of subscriptions is an important reminder that this demographic is still a spending force to be reckoned with. Subscription businesses seeking to increase revenue have many reasons to look to this age group.