Younger consumers turn to social media for product discovery

Alex Brownsell, Celeste Huang

Insights from WARC’s 2023 Consumer Trends reports.

The way consumers use the internet is evolving. Younger users skew towards a more open-ended style of browsing, where discovery and inspiration are the main drivers of search behavior, WARC’s latest 2023 Consumer Trends reports reveal.

A GWI survey of nearly one million consumers worldwide found that Gen Z users favour more personalised, algorithm-led social networks (48%) over search engines (44%) when looking for information about brands, products or services. In comparison, older audiences are more likely to use traditional search platforms.

Responding to the data, Magic Numbers founder Dr Grace Kite quippedthat there...

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