How Gen Z Feels About Retailers
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Welcome to Morning Consult’s From A to Gen Z newsletter. We put the headlines you’re reading about Gen Alpha, Gen Z and millennials into context with our high-frequency survey data to help you better understand exactly how and why they’re spending their time and dollars.
Last week, Morning Consult published our first-ever report using our new Reputation Score™ metric, which combines a company’s perceived trustworthiness, ethical behavior, social responsibility, attractiveness, relevance, and value to stakeholders into a single signal for brand reputation.
In the report, we calculated the average reputation scores for seven key retail categories: apparel, shoes, fragrance and color cosmetics, skincare and personal care, household goods, home furnishings and appliances, and multi-brand retailers.
Today, we’re taking a look at how each of these categories fares among Gen Zers specifically.
🤨🤨 Tough critics 🤨🤨
In every sense of the word, Gen Zers are superconsumers. They engage with media more than any other generation, they often overspend on feel-good purchases, and they always try out new brands. But their penchant for shopping doesn’t prevent them from being scrutinous: For all tested retail categories, Gen Z adults had the lowest reputation score averages compared with other demographics analyzed.
Morning Consult Reputation Scores: Retail
Growing up alongside the internet, Gen Zers are extremely media savvy; this means that they’re quick to spot and call out anything they perceive as poor brand behavior, from overindulgent sponsored trips to insensitive ad campaigns. The young cohort is consistently among the most likely to report paying attention to brands’ politics and ethics — and boycotting or “buycotting” in accordance with them — too.
Still, some categories fare better than others. Among the highest-performing are multibrand retailers, which we define as retailers that either sell across multiple categories or carry multiple brands, such as Target or Walgreens. Gen Z undoubtedly appreciates these retailers as destinations to explore and compare many different products at once. Those that cater specifically to Gen Zers’ well-documented interests in things like beauty and personal care perform notably well with the cohort — both in Morning Consult’s reputation score rankings and external sales data.
▶️ Explore more of our brand reputation research.
😨💻D2C brands have a Gen Z problem 😨💻
Gen Z’s general hard-to-impress-ness is further illustrated by new research from my colleague Lindsey Roeschke. She found that another retailer class — direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands — faces significant challenges with young consumers on everything from favorability to purchase consideration.
In fact, according to Morning Consult Intelligence data, net purchasing consideration for a group of major D2C brands has dropped almost 20 points since early 2025 among Gen Z adults.
While a range of factors may be driving this change, the same decline in purchasing consideration is not reflected amongst Gen Zers for other major non-D2C brands tracked by Morning Consult. Brand groups, including key players in retail, hospitality and restaurants, for example, have remained relatively steady over this period, suggesting true cracks in the foundation for this key demographic of D2C consumers.
▶️ Our full archive of research and analysis on Gen Z’s brand perceptions and consumption habits can be found here.
What Else We’re Reading
- Sorority Girls Are Cashing In Big for Their Viral Rush Videos (The Wall Street Journal)
- The AI Kids Take San Francisco (New York Magazine)
- Americans Are Looking For Energy (Drinks) (Morning Consult)
Upcoming
September 30 — To Overcome Analysis Paralysis, Get Thee to a Store. My colleague Claire Tassin’s latest piece explores how in-store visits are most impactful for decision-addled consumers looking to make a purchase.
Ellyn Briggs is a brands analyst on the Industry Intelligence team, where she conducts research, authors analyst notes and advises brand and marketing leaders on how to apply insights to make better business decisions. Prior to joining Morning Consult, Ellyn worked as a market researcher and brand strategist in both agency and in-house settings. She graduated from American University with a bachelor’s degree in finance. For speaking opportunities and booking requests, please email [email protected].