Marketing has long rested on the use of market segmentation. While birth age has been a useful way to create groups, it describes segments but in itself does not help to understand segment motivations. Environmental events experienced during one's coming-of-age years, however, create values that remain relatively unchanged throughout one's life. Such values provide a common bond for those in that age group, or cohort. Segmenting by 'coming-ofage' age provides a richer segmentation approach than birth age. This approach, known to work in America, is used in this paper to create generational cohorts in Russia and in Brazil.
A new generational cohort is emerging from the Millennial market segment as a result of cataclysmic events that have occurred since 2008. Interviews with college upperclassmen in the United States identified significant events influencing their values, the values arising from these events, and new values not associated with older Millennials. The most important events identified included the Great Recession, 9/11, and the election of the first African-American president. Values of Millennials were assessed in online surveys of college juniors and seniors in the United States in the fall of 2009 and 2010 and among older Millennials, aged 27-31, during the summer of 2010. The values most strongly differentiating the younger and older Millennials were "piety" and "thrift." Younger Millennials in the United States are less thrifty and more secular and sexually permissive than older Millennials. They are also less patriotic and less concerned about politics, sustainability, saving, and making mistakes in life. This suggests a splintering of the Millennials cohort as a result of the Great Recession and the potential emergence of a younger "entitlement" cohort. It also suggests further investigation of cross-national value shifts among younger Millennials, prompted by the Great Recession.
The values of coming-of-age millennials in the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand were studied to determine if their values are similar, thus enabling marketers to stress the same values panculturally. While similarities were found on some value dimensions, many differences were noted as well. U.S. and Swedish millennials were most different from one another while New Zealand millennials were more similar to U.S. respondents than Swedes, a finding consistent with Hofstede's model of cultural values. The findings support the need to understand cohort-based values and cultural values in designing a marketing strategy targeting millennials across cultures.
Marketers, public policy makers, and society in general have tended to use chronological age as a means of defining the maturing consumer market. Yet people age physiologically—and chronological age is not always a reasonable correlate to this process. This article discusses some natural physiological processes and presents some implications for marketing.
Consumers act out roles throughout their lives. Marketers assist in this role playing by providing the wardrobes, props, and sets in the form of products and services. They also help people understand acceptable role behavior by portraying roles in their communication programs. Consumers assume new roles as they age. This article is designed to enhance understanding of the often‐ignored roles that accompany aging and provides examples of and suggestions for effective marketing for these role transitions.
The health care landscape is ever changing. Medical groups are experiencing challenges in recruiting staff, dealing with managing effective clinical teams, and tempering the growing tensions among partnerships and medical groups. Additionally, all clinicians report many patients are now approaching them differently than in the past. They come armed with medical information from the Internet and a more questioning attitude toward the clinician's directive for care. What accounts for these behavioral changes and management challenges within health care organizations? These issues may be best understood and addressed through generational cohort analysis.
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