Karen Kuo started buying in Costco while studying at Western University. She and her roommates made a monthly trip: they would go together, looking for bulk offers and popular articles they had seen on social networks.
And they were not alone. Kuo says that the halls were full of other students, cars overloaded with things. As a content creator, Kuo publishes lifestyle content, including some of his trips to Costco, where he says that comments are always flooded with younger people interested in the last new product or Holy Grail refrigerium in the wholesale shopping center.
“The purchases of groceries are only a very standard part of a weekly routine, but Costco has the ability to make it fun and make it interesting,” Kuo said.
In a recent gain call, the wholesaler reported that almost half of his new members of members were now coming from people under 40.
The company attributed part of the increase to its retail presence online, but buyers, content creators and experts say that good offers and exaggeration of social networks are attracting younger people towards the brand.
In the search for bulk offers
Kuo is out of school and works now, but says he still buys in Costco every two weeks or so to stock up on the basics he uses frequently.
Surely you will buy certain articles of the pantry such as dust and coffee protein in Costco each time, since it says that you can find them for approximately two thirds of the price compared to other stores.
The data show that young people are fighting with the cost of living. Research of the Agricultural Food Analysis Laboratory at the University of Dalhousie He discovered that about 40 percent of people in generation Z used their savings or lent money to buy food, compared to 20 percent of baby boomers.
A recent Restaurants Canada report also found that, although 75 percent of Canadians in general said they were having dinner less frequently due to the growing cost of living, that figure increased to 81 percent for those between the ages of 18 and 34 years.
As of this summer, the Costco food court will no longer be for everyone to enjoy. CBC Pinki Wong went to the place to see what changes are coming and how Vancouveritas are reacting.
Mike Von Massow, a food economist at the University of Guelph, says that companies like Costco are very aware of how much young people are fighting and probably announced them directly to them. Von Massow says that Costco established a recruitment tent on his university campus this year for the first time.
“We tend to be loyal to our grocery store,” Von Massow told CBC News, adding that if stores assume that they are more likely to be a customer for life, then “getting a young man, particularly a student, can be a good investment.”
And since students tend to live with multiple roommates sometimes in houses of four or five people, Von Massow says that buying products in family portions and dividing the cost could be a good way to save some cash.
The Costco food court also has coveted bargains.
The price of a hot dog combo and soft drinks has $ 1.50 have passed since the 1980sDespite inflation, and for a long time it has attracted hungry customers.
Costco cult followers
But love for Costco goes beyond the search for a good business.
From the boys of Costco, a father-son duo that qualifies food in the store (the good ones get a “boom”, the bad ones get a “fatality”), to the people who throw birthday parties with Costco songs, or even birthday parties in Costco, social networks are flooded with costco content.
Influencers who publish exclusively on Costco have also appeared, including the Canadian Canadian of Costco, Tina Chow. Calgarian publications under the mango @CostColverscanada in Tiktok, where it has more than 178,000 followers, and executes a group with the same name on Facebook.
Chow and Kuo say that the exaggeration of social networks around certain modern products is a great driving factor that has taken young people to stores: Costco articles such as Dubai chocolate, Korean beauty products and “deceptions” that resemble high -end clothes of Lululemon have become incredibly popular online.
Craig Patterson, founder and editor of the retail retail retail news, agrees.
Costco’s capacity to store articles that consumers want due to online buzzing have contributed to the store having a kind of “cult track,” says Patterson, is not a small feat, since it arrives at a time when retailers like Nordstrom and Hudson’s Bay have retired from Canada or completely closed.
The current20:09How Costco became a cultural phenomenon
Chow agrees that online emotion has also fed a feeling of something bigger than the retailer itself, which makes it a cultural contact point in a way that other large stores simply are not.
“It has become more a community in social networks, and I think that is the most important,” said Chow. “If you can connect to [the store] And it is something that you are part, instead of seeing a commercial or an ad, then everyone wants to be part of it. “
