Why do so many things that claim to capture young people's attention make you laugh the second you see them?

Because young people may look like they have money, but they are not the sort to hand it over easily.

Everyone wants to win young people over these days, and young people are hard to win over.

On the surface, they do seem willing to spend. In a survey in the United States, the research firm Gallup found that young people are the group most likely to keep buying a brand they like even when it costs more than the alternatives. Compared with older people, the small share of young people who are loyal to a brand are more likely to recommend it to others. An Inc. survey likewise found that a pleasant shopping experience and good product quality are the main reasons young people share information about a brand online.

But Gallup's report points out that "millennials" — people born between 1980 and 1996 — are in fact the consumers with the least brand loyalty of any generation. Only 25% of them show clear approval of and preference for a particular brand, service or product, against 28% of people born between 1965 and 1977 and 33% of those born between 1946 and 1965. The figures look much the same across most industries that everyday spending touches. Because their standards keep rising and new options keep arriving, young people also fall out of love with a brand easily, and stop being loyal to it.

For businesses, the difficulties are everywhere. Young people reach a company through more channels, for one thing. At the same bank, a young customer is likely to use both the branch and the bank's app, while their parents' generation gets everything at the branch. Dissatisfaction with any one channel can knock loyalty down sharply, and young people care far more than other age groups about the experience a business delivers on every channel, so a drop in satisfaction with one of them drags the whole experience down further still.

A large share of the complaints on social media are about shopping: today it's "Works great! A holy grail for oily skin!"; tomorrow it might be "Useless. Never buying it again."

Gallup's report says that although young people like to share what they buy on social media, given their attitude toward brands, they act less like word-of-mouth "brand ambassadors" than like "brand destroyers" for some of those brands.

The report's main point, in short: young people are consumers who are willing to spend money and very hard to please.

Over the past year or so, QDaily Research Lab has been trying to find out how young readers feel about the things they buy. We published more than 30 surveys on the theme of "experiences I can't stand," across different areas of consumption. Put the results together and a pattern shows up: young people vent to insist on their own preferences, to protest the tricks businesses play, and to register their annoyance at products and services that feel phoned in. On both products and marketing, they are getting more particular and harder to satisfy.

Here is what we found about how young people spend money.

Turning into "professional-grade consumers," with rising demands on quality

If everyone dreams of mastering a skill through the 10,000-hour rule, shopping may be the easiest one to practice on.

To get something worth the money, people pour countless hours into researching brands, models, prices, even manufacturing methods and history. To buy a washing machine they study terms like impeller, drum, washer-dryer combo, lint box and stacking bracket; they cram chemistry to understand everything from fabric types to what detergents are made of; they compare discount numbers across shopping platforms. Shopping has become an act that draws on everything a person knows.

Whenever money is involved, they are careful. After a film, young people are used to writing reviews and reading them. If the previous generation mostly went to the movies for the spectacle, young people have standards and opinions about narrative logic, pacing and acting.

Preparing to buy, buying, reviewing: at every step, young people pick up something new. You could even say that much of what people learn outside work comes from doing their shopping homework.

Because they are good at homework, young people put little faith in advertising and marketing when judging how good a product actually is, and they do not fall for tricks and gimmicks. They trust their own judgment.

In the QDaily Research Lab survey "What do you want to complain about in Chinese horror films?," we found that young people see straight through the main trick of domestic horror — "building scary scenes purely by suddenly cranking up the volume" (13.8%) — and cannot stand it when "the ending always falls back on it-was-a-dream or he's-insane, forcing a materialist explanation" (15.9%), or worn-out props like "embroidered shoes, red wedding dresses, dormitories" (13.2%). Similarly, in "Which elements in Chinese documentaries can you not stand?," besides "a single dull set of values, larger-than-life heroes, nostalgia for sale, relentless emotional manipulation" (17.8%), the option that drew the most agreement was "scenes that ring false, sometimes obviously scripted or staged" (16.1%). Young viewers are good at spotting the seams.

They are wary, too, of gimmick products aimed squarely at them. In "What do you want to complain about in cultural-creative products?," their biggest complaint about such products was "there's actually no creativity in them" (804 responses), followed by "poor quality" (208) and "the markup is too high to be worth it" (202).

On products and services, they judge the whole experience — and swear by details

Buying something, or being served, is no longer a matter of "take a quick look and hand over the money without thinking too hard." In daily life and in what they buy, young people want a complete, finely made sensory experience.

Household products like laundry liquid and shampoo have to keep coming up with new scents, because some people care intensely about smell. Sometimes they develop an unaccountable love for a smell most other people would never notice. Twelve South made a scented candle out of mint, peach, basil, lavender, citrus and sage to recreate the smell of unboxing a Mac, and it turned out to be more sought-after than anyone expected.

In "Do you have this 'color obsessive' syndrome too?," we found that young people's fixation on color has reached the point of "if an app icon's colors are ugly, I don't even want to download it" (24.2%). When a product is not all that irreplaceable, looks that have nothing to do with using it carry outsized weight. Spare a thought for those apps.

Sound can be a minefield as well. More young people than you would think stay out of supermarkets at Chinese New Year simply to avoid hearing China Dolls and "Gong Xi Fa Cai" on a loop. In "Which settings have background music you can no longer stand?," the worst offenders were the soundtracks of browser-game ads (21.5%), the cheery, clattering music malls play on repeat during holidays (17.7%), and the unmistakable "shamate" style at hair salons (15.5%). Some of the businesses blacklisted over their background music probably still have no idea why.

As noted above, young people care a great deal about the experience a business delivers on every channel, and a drop in satisfaction with one of them drags the whole experience down further. The survey "What can you least stand about going to a concert?" bears this out. The most common complaint was not about the concert at all, but that "when it's over the subway and buses have stopped running, and you can never get a taxi" (510 votes). For young people, "going to a concert" covers everything from leaving home to getting back, and a problem at any point spoils the whole thing.

The idea that "making the product itself good is enough" is risky too: young people think packaging matters. "Which kind of packaging can you not stand?" drew 7,596 complaints, and they clustered. Showy but useless: the paper belly bands wrapped around books (1,130 votes) and oversized containers (891 votes). More trouble than they are worth: the plastic film on new furniture that will not come off cleanly (729 votes) and sticky labels that leave residue (690 votes).

Facing a promotion, seeing through "spend 1,000, save 10" at a glance

Hearing "would you like a membership card?" or "there's a discount, come quick," young people roll their eyes first and then look into what is actually on offer.

QDaily Research Lab has run several surveys on membership cards, online memberships, set menus and store promotions. Some of what we heard back:

• "Spend 100 yuan, earn one point; 20 points gets you a plush toy; sale items don't count" — what on earth is that? Could there be something immediate and simple, like a straight discount once you spend a certain amount?
• "Set menus are a setup." A restaurant's set menu either unloads food you don't like or talks you into overpriced drinks. Letting the set menu decide what you eat isn't worth it.
• What video sites call a "members-only speed boost" is really throttling for everyone else.
• A Starbucks barista spent 10 minutes proving to me that a card would get me three extra drinks — but the 88-yuan membership fee is worth about three drinks anyway...

In an earlier survey, "How would you cut back on food," the option with the most support was "I like food in small packages." Yet in "What careful habits do you have when buying food?," the top answer was "I compare quantity and price carefully." They will pay a small premium, in other words, but a small package is still no excuse to price things however you like. That is how level-headed they are.

Sick of gimmicks: grabbing attention for its own sake only breeds resentment

It is getting harder to fool young people with vague, plausible-sounding concepts. And a concept can be old and established and still draw scorn once every kind of junk has been stirred into it. After all, sticking colored lights on the back of a phone gets called "black tech"; Photoshopping your face into Angelababy's gets called "artificial intelligence"; a Bluetooth speaker playing background music at home and a motorized curtain you open with a button get called a "smart home." Such a failure of imagination.

Playing the nostalgia card is another gimmick that grates. If the product has little appeal on its own, that pitch only breeds more resentment. In "What kind of nostalgia can you not stand?," 1,324 people complained about films and shows built on nostalgia, because they are badly made; 331 could not understand the kitsch of people not yet 20 pining for their lost youth; and 185 complained about snacks sold as post-80s memories, and about the band Mayday being sold as that generation's unforgettable one.

Pitches carrying hidden stereotypes and sexism grate more. In "Which products and services marketed to women do you actually not buy?," we found that designs made specially "for women" sometimes annoy the women they target. The least welcome "women's products" were self-help and inspirational bestsellers for women (19.2%), phones whose headline feature is beautifying selfies (16.8%) and games billed as made for women (16.8%). Women's response, over and over: "what on earth is this rubbish."

Young people can also pick out the exact words that get used as gimmicks, and may swerve around them on reflex. In "Which words do you think went through inflation this year?," "black tech" came first: a product that uses the term is assumed to have no tech in it at all.

These may be the buzzwords whose tricks are easiest to see through at a glance:

"Black tech": use the word and people assume the product is all black and no tech.

"Korean-style": once a keyword for filtering clothes, until shoppers grasped the gap between the buyer's photos and the seller's.

"Remake": no prejudice against Chinese productions, but a straight copy usually means the quality travels a long way down too.

"Cultural-creative": no idea whether there's any creativity, but the first thought is "this will wound my wallet."

"Youth": nobody understands what my youth was like, least of all the bad films flying the "youth" banner.

"Limited edition": hunger marketing? Sorry, I'm a picky eater.

"Minimalist": these days, if blank space covers more than half the design, it dares to call itself "Japanese minimalist."

"Collab edition": not the quality of a luxury good, not the price of a mass-market one. Goodbye.

Caring more about order and manners

Because they grew up in a different environment, young people are sensitive about privacy and about the distance between people: they glare when an elder asks what they earn, and roll their eyes at children bouncing off the walls in public. This carries over into what they buy. The order of a place decides how they feel about it, and a business's sales talk has to come in a form they do not find off-putting.

In "What do you want to complain about at the gym?," the main grievances were not only the equipment, the sales pitches everywhere, and the people who monopolize the hair dryers and machines: the smell coming off some gym-goers was what young people hated most.

In "What behavior can you not stand at airports?," saving seats, talking loudly, children running around and cutting in line all came in for attack. And at department stores and Watsons, what young people can least stand is beyond doubt the sales assistant who will not stop following you.

At the movies, seats and screens matter, of course, but what really wrecks the experience is the quality of the audience around you and how many restless children are in the room. Young people who go often even carry a rough mental ranking of how orderly their local cinemas are: "Good equipment at this one, but it's full of unruly kids. Better blacklist it."

In short, young people may look like they have money, but they are not the sort to hand it over easily. More than price or brand, what they care about is how a product makes them feel, sometimes over the smallest details.

So it is no longer news when a time-management app gets deleted because "the icon turned ugly after the redesign," or a film hoping to slip by on a heartthrob's fame gets shunned over "values I don't share." Rather than complain that young people are impossible to read, businesses would do better to ask how to do their own work with more care and more decency.

Cover image from: Lin Xiaoyao

QDaily Research Lab**is a survey column of QDaily's, an interactive platform for exploring all kinds of questions about how we live. It might look at a shift or a trend in ways of living, or at one brand's service. Here you can vote, vent and take a position