Teenagers overwhelmingly prefer to shop on Amazon (AMZN)

Amazon leads the way in attracting teen shoppers

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "E-Commerce Industry Insider" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

An overwhelming majority of U.S. teens say they shop online, and Amazon is the undisputed king of the e-commerce jungle in this regard.

Amazon is the "preferred shopping website" of 41% of U.S. teens, according to a seasonal survey of teenage shopping habits conducted by Piper Jaffray. That figure has grown from 31% in Spring 2014 and 35% in Spring 2015.

That 41% figure crushes the two sites tied for second place, Nike and Forever 21 at 5% apiece. And the popularity of those sites has been almost unchanged in the last several years.

Other retailers should be extremely concerned about Amazon's dominance in this area. The e-commerce giant clearly has power to gain marketing and mind share among teenagers, while companies like Nike and Forever 21 are splitting the much smaller leftover portions.

And while teenagers do not typically have a lot of spending power, the habits they develop in their formative years would almost certainly extend into adulthood when that spending power increases.

Retailers, however, still have opportunities to close this gap. Less than 6% of online shoppers in 2016 will be in their teenage years, which is almost unchanged from 2012, according to data from Invesp and Forrester. So Amazon will remain a major threat, but online retailers still have a chance to catch up.

But to do so, it will be crucial for these retailers to understand their consumer base. Without this knowledge, these companies are doomed to stay far behind the pace Amazon has set.

Cooper Smith, senior research analyst at BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on e-commerce demographics that breaks down U.S. online and mobile shoppers by gender, age, income, and education, and takes a look at what they're shopping for, and how their behaviors differ.

This is crucial information for retailers who need to know who their potential customers are online in order to market to them effectively.

Amazon leads the way in attracting teen shoppers

Here are the surprising facts about men's e-commerce and mobile commerce habits:

• When it comes to e-commerce, men drive nearly as much overall spending online in the U.S. as women. The conventional wisdom is that women drive shopping trends, since they control up to 80% to 85% of household spending. However, In 2010, comScore estimated that women account for $6 out of every $10 spent online. In 2012, a Greenfield survey found that women account for 58% of online spending in the U.S.
• Men are more likely to make purchases on mobile devices. 22% of men made a purchase on their smartphones last year, compared to 18% of women. And 20% of men bought something on a tablet, while the percentage for women was 17%.
• Many men say they would like to shift all their spending online. 40% of American men aged 18 to 34 said they would "ideally buy everything online," compared to only 33% of women the same age. (See chart, above.)
• Men are avid users of online auction sites: 43% of men ages 18-34 say they typically shop on online auction sites like eBay, compared to only 31% of women the same age.
• Men are price-conscious: Men of all age groups are more likely to look for lower prices on their phones than women, and are more likely than women to buy things on their phone.
• Male teens are also more avid e-commerce shoppers than their female counterparts: Among teens, the proportion of males who report shopping online (86%) is ten percentage points higher than that for teen girls (76%). Also, a higher percentage of teen boys say they shop at general interest e-commerce sites like Amazon (34%) and eBay (8%) than is the case among teen girls, who prefer more specialized and fashion-conscious sites.

In full, the report:

• Examines e-commerce behavior by generation
• Indexes e-commerce spending by age group against the amount of time a given demographic spends online.
• Breaks down online spending habits of millennials and teens, including the brands and products they shop for.
• Examines the factors behind what drives online purchases among millennials.
• Identifies Gen X, boomer, and older consumers' online spending tendencies.
• Looks at how education and income influence e-commerce spending.

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of e-commerce demographics.