Does Customer Age Influence Retail Sales? : The Effect of Demographics on Retail Performance

Abstract: This paper intends to examine whether certain age groups have a positive influence on retail revenue. A large body of work exists on the subject of retailing, however, many fail to show quantitative research on whether demographic characteristics of customers influence retail sales. While previous literature focuses on the supply side of retailing i.e. spatial dependencies between shops, number of competitors, and retail location, the empirical analysis of this paper will rather focus on the demand side of retailing i.e., the customer. A dataset consisting of retail sales, age structures, income, population density and gender ratios of 290 municipalities in Sweden collected in 2014 is used in the empirical testing. The main findings show that age groups between the ages of 18 and 44 have a significant positive influence on retail sales.