The world's millennial generation is a major driving force behind the digital economy. Their consumption patterns and preferences underpin the growth of new interconnecting ecosystems of recreation and commerce. Asia's digital millennials: Mobile, social and borderless, an Economist Intelligence Unit report commissioned by the Singapore Economic Development Board, examines the ways in which the consumer behaviour and digital habits of millennials in Asia converge or diverge from those in other parts of the world.
Relative to millennials in Europe and the US, those in Asia are unique in that they are both digital and mobile natives, with many in the more recently developing markets of South-east Asia and China having gone online first through their mobile phones. To highlight the differences in their consumption habits borne out of this unique experience, The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed 826 millennials across 12 countries in Asia and the West. We found that Asian millennials are much more likely than their Western counterparts to:
- Be heavier users of chat/messenger services and use those and other social networks to influence their purchasing decisions and those of others.
- Have adopted mobile e-payments faster, selecting it as their favoured means of payment (over debit cards, still the most popular method in the West).
- Have deeper and broader tastes, stretching from local and global, making their preferences both complex and unpredictable.
