There is no single reliable percentage. The best-documented figure is 51%: in Empower's March 2025 survey of 1,092 U.S. adults, 51% said they had made a purchase or investment because of "financial FOMO." That covers investing as well as shopping, and it is one financial company's survey, so it is not an e-commerce benchmark.
A widely repeated 60% figure for millennials buying within 24 hours matches a 2015 Canadian survey, not a U.S. study. Its press release says 68%, trade press printed both, and it records what respondents said, not counted purchases. None of the numbers below are solid enough to forecast a conversion lift from; the useful takeaway is that urgency is worth testing on your own store, using your own numbers, not theirs.
The numbers you can cite
Two of these sources are polls of what people say about themselves. Three are academic studies, which score FOMO on rating scales and report how strongly it moves with other things, not what share of people buy. Read the last column before quoting a row.
| Finding | Source | Sample and method | Scope caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51% said they had made a purchase or investment because of "financial FOMO" | Empower, "Financial FOMO," 2025 | Online survey of 1,092 U.S. adults 18+, fielded 28 March 2025. No margin of error, weighting or panel provider on the page | Includes investing, not only e-commerce. A financial company's own survey. The page also words the 51% as seeing others' purchases on social media motivating spending |
| Feel financial FOMO: nearly 70% of Gen Z, 57% of Millennials and Gen X, 28% of Baby Boomers | Empower, 2025 | Same survey; age-group sample sizes are not published | Measures the feeling, not a purchase |
| Americans who experience financial FOMO named dining out (21%), travel (18%), investments (16%) and events such as concerts (15%) as top spending areas | Empower, 2025 | Same survey | The page lists top categories only and does not state the base for these percentages |
| 69% of millennials experience FOMO | Eventbrite and Harris Poll, "Millennials Fueling the Experience Economy," 2014 | Online Harris Poll, 27 June to 1 July 2014, of 2,083 U.S. adults including 507 millennials (18-34). Not a probability sample | The feeling, not buying. Framed around live events. Twelve years old |
| Higher FoMO went with lower self-rated financial wellbeing (standardized path coefficient -0.67) | Bartosiak, Lee and Loibl, *PLOS ONE*, 2025 | 863 U.S. adults aged 18-40 who follow influencers, recruited on Amazon MTurk; self-reported scales, structural equation modeling | An association, and about wellbeing rather than purchases. The authors caution against generalizing to the U.S. population |
| Perceived scarcity had the strongest link to FoMO of the three drivers tested (path coefficient 0.323, against 0.268 for materialism and 0.245 for envy). FoMO was linked to impulsive buying (0.533) | Du, Deng and Liu, *Behavioral Sciences*, 2026 | 518 Chinese consumers who had bought Pop Mart products, online survey, November to December 2025, PLS-SEM | One category (collectible blind-box toys), mostly young buyers, one point in time. Coefficients show strength of association, not a share of buyers |
| FOMO was linked to both harmonious and obsessive brand passion; obsessive passion was the stronger predictor of compulsive buying; age moderated the FOMO and obsessive-passion link | Japutra, Gordon-Wilson, Ekinci and Adams, *Journal of Business Research*, 2025 | 511 consumers; partial least squares | Abstract only; the publisher and repository PDF blocked automated access. No percentage there, and the sample's country is unverified |
Read across the rows and the feeling turns up often: about seven in ten millennials in 2014, nearly seven in ten Gen Z adults in 2025. Those are different surveys and populations. Even inside Empower's survey the bases differ, with 57% of millennials feeling financial FOMO but 51% of all adults saying they had acted on it, so the figures cannot be subtracted. The academic studies link FOMO to impulsive or compulsive buying, but none puts a share of shoppers on it. If you need one sentence to cite, use this: about half of U.S. adults in one 2025 survey said financial FOMO had led them to buy or invest.
The numbers you shouldn't cite (and why)
"Shouldn't cite" does not mean "false." It means the figure could not be traced to a study that states who was asked, when and how. Here is where each one came from, and why it does not hold up.
| Number as usually repeated | Where it traces to | Why it doesn't hold up |
|---|---|---|
| 60% of millennials make a reactive purchase after FOMO, most often within 24 hours | Four statistics roundups that repeat some version of it (none links a study) and the sources one lists; trade reports of the survey; Eventbrite's 2014, 2015 and 2017 releases; Adweek (paywall); Forbes (blocked) | Closest match: a 2015 survey of 1,200 Canadians commissioned by a PR firm. Its release says 68%; trade press printed 60% and 68%. Not a U.S. study, and not a count of purchases. Details below the table |
| "Only X left" messages raise sales by up to 226%; limited-time offers by up to 332% | The roundups and the one vendor source they name (SaleCycle) | No study, sample or dates behind any of it, only posts repeating each other, and the claim is about sales lift from a tactic, not FOMO's share of buyers |
| Countdown timers lift conversion by 8% to 34% | Two roundups that print the range, plus the one figure with a named origin (8.6%) | Only 8.6% traces to a named source, a Dutch agency's A/B test described second-hand by a business blog with no link, sample size or dates. The 32% and 34% figures carry no source at all |
| 56% of social media users make a purchase after seeing friends or influencers promote a product | One vendor guide, and the closest match, a Mashable report from July 2013 on a MyLife.com survey | That 56% is about the fear of missing events and status updates while offline, not about buying, and the original MyLife.com survey is not available to check |
The 60% line deserves a closer look. Its wording matches a 9 March 2015 press release from Canadian PR firm Citizen Relations on a fall 2014 survey of 1,200 Canadians (margin of error 2.8 points). It says 68% of millennials "will" make a reactive purchase, often within 24 hours. Trade coverage then printed 60% (Strategy) and 68% (Marketing Magazine; MediaPost, which limits it to millennials who feel FOMO). No full report or questionnaire explains the difference.
Why the numbers disagree
Set 51%, 69% and 68% side by side and the sources look contradictory. Mostly they answer different questions. Eventbrite's 69% asks whether millennials feel FOMO at all, Empower's 51% whether it moved money, and the Canadian release what millennials say they "will" do. Feeling it, acting on it and expecting to act are three separate measurements, and statistics roundups tend to slide from one to the next.
"Purchase" also changes with the surveyor: a meal or an investment for Empower, live events for Eventbrite, blind-box toys for Pop Mart. None is a checkout on a general online store, so even the best row carries over to e-commerce only loosely.
The panels behind these numbers also skew toward association, not prevalence: the academic studies above show that FOMO moves with impulsive or compulsive buying, not what share of shoppers experience it. And asking people whether FOMO made them buy assumes they know why they bought. A study of 115 undergraduates using an imagined music festival (van Solt, Rixom and Taylor, 2018) found purchase intent was higher when a close friend group would attend, but that is intention in a hypothetical scenario, not a purchase in one.
So which number should a store owner trust? None of them as a count of shoppers. What holds across the sources is smaller and more practical: the feeling is widespread, it is stronger among younger adults in Empower's survey, and perceived scarcity is tied to it in the one study that tested it directly.
What this means for an online store
Use the data for what it supports: a reason to test urgency, not a prediction of the result. If you quote a survey percentage, name the survey, the year and who was asked, or leave it out.
What matters for your store is your own deadline's effect. A hypothetical example: you plan a 10% offer for one weekend. Split visitors so half see it with an end time and half see it with none, run both at once, and compare conversion rate and revenue per visitor once each group has enough orders.
A separate reason to keep the deadline true is regulatory: the FTC's dark-patterns report names countdown timers that reset when they run out, and our guide to limited-time offers in ecommercecovers where urgency crosses that line.
How to use urgency honestly with a pop-up
A deadline is honest when it is true and when it actually ends. Popconvert's campaign scheduling lets you set the start and end of a gamified pop-up by exact date and time in advance, and the campaign goes live and ends automatically, with no manual toggle to remember.
Triggers are the behavior conditions that activate the display: Exit Intent when someone is about to leave, Scroll after a visitor has scrolled a set share of the page. The help center suggests one or two per campaign rather than stacking them.
A hypothetical example: a store announces a weekend sale that ends Sunday at 11:59 PM. It schedules a gamified pop-up, such as a spin the wheel, to run for exactly that window, with an Exit Intent trigger so it appears as people are about to leave before the sale ends. The prize coupon's expiry is set where the coupon is created, in the store platform, if it supports one. A visitor arriving Monday sees no pop-up.
FAQ
What percentage of people have bought something because of FOMO?
No single figure is reliable. The closest is Empower's 2025 survey, where about half of U.S. adults said financial FOMO had led to a purchase or investment, so it is not limited to shopping.
Is the widely repeated 60% figure for millennials' reactive purchases within 24 hours accurate?
Not as usually stated. The closest source is a 2015 Canadian survey release from a PR firm reporting 68%, and trade coverage then printed both 60% and 68%.
Are younger shoppers more affected by FOMO?
For the feeling, yes: nearly 70% of Gen Z reported financial FOMO in Empower's survey, against 28% of Baby Boomers. On actual buying, Gen Zers (11%) were more than twice as likely as Millennials to have bought something because of it in the past week, and Millennials (22%) about twice as likely as Gen Zers to spend on travel because of it, though Empower does not publish a base for those figures and it covers spending broadly, not e-commerce specifically. Japutra and colleagues report that age moderates the link between FOMO and obsessive brand passion; the abstract gives no direction.
Do countdown timers and "only X left" messages increase sales?
Possibly, but none of the published lift figures trace back to a test with a stated sample and dates, so they are not worth quoting. Test the deadline against no deadline on your own store instead.
Want to run a deadline that ends when it says it will? Start a free trial or compare Popconvert's plans.