Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, are making a change in the world and that includes a change in the death care sector. It is estimated that millennials will make up about 70% of the workforce by 2025, and many of them are working in the funeral industry already.
Trend-Setting
A new trend has emerged for “death positivity” as some funeral directors, from this generation, seeking ways to help people take a more active role in the processes that surround death.Some of these ideas include encouraging clients to witness the process of cremation, giving people more opportunities to care for the body of a loved one, and promoting eco-friendly burials, new types of cremation urns for ashes, keepsakes, and pet shrouds. JL Memorial offers such services, which you can see here in our online shop.
Caitlin Doughty, a Los Angeles-based mortician and death awareness advocate, is at the forefront of an industry revolution, and not to mention, a millennial.
In 2011, she began an educational non-profit organization called The Order of the Good Death, which describes itself as “a group of funeral industry professionals, academics and artists exploring ways to prepare a death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.” The group spurred a “death positive” movement, aiming to decrease our collective fear of death by educating people about funerals, death and what happens to our bodies. Doughty also runs an extremely popular “Ask a Mortician” series on YouTube.
“We want to provide interactive experiences for grieving families to empower them,” said Doughty. Relatives and friends are invited to be as much a part of the death care process as they wish—they can prepare their loved one’s makeup, they can dress them, they can even push the deceased into the cremation machine. Clarity offers a simple template and helps the family make informed decisions about how they’d like to say goodbye.
Consumer Habits
Millennial consumers are becoming more influential even before they reach an age at which they themselves will need funeral services.They are also less traditional and religious than previous generations. It is expected that many consumer habits will shift in the next several years, including:
- Advanced planning will be a priority – Millennials are informed enough to realise that planning is a good investment.
- Personalisation will be on focus – Millennials tend to do things their own way, and funerals & cremation make no exclusion. This generation expects unique customisation options for funeral products such as nontraditional urns for ashes and even urn engravements.
- Funeral homes will have to become more technologically advanced – Millennials want to be able to comparison-shop online, which means funeral homes with websites rich on content that include pricing options will be far more successful.
- Emphasising on eco-friendly options – This generation is interested in options that previous generations may not even know exist. Did you know with its rise, cremation might surpass funerals by 2035? Cremation is proven to be more eco-friendly than burials and it becomes a preferred choice for millennials. More and more of them are willing to keep the ashes of a loved one in an nontraditional cremation urn for ashes or a keepsake.
In closing, there are many positive outlooks that arise from the millennial’s perspective. For example, Doughty hopes that by understanding death, we’ll find it a little less daunting. Funerals are one of the few times we unplug and attempt to be our most present selves, so we should use that time to the fullest. “Funerals are a gift to the living,” Doughty said.