You've done the research. You know your customer's income, where he lives, what he drives. But you don't know whether he prefers Bob Dylan or Alanis Morisette. Or Pepsi, or Snapple or tap water. And you don't know why. Why, for that matter, are Baby Boomers acting nothing like their parents did in their fifth decade? Why does the 40-year-old of today have much more in common with her 20y-year-old self than with today's college student? The hidden force at work in each of these examples and many others is generational. Generational ties link widely disparate individuals of varying education, income and life stage. And let's face it, reliable data about today's three living generations can be a vital element in a marketer's arsenal -- in some instances more important than any sort of demographic information. To an astonishing degree, your generational cohort -- Mature (born 1909-1949), Boomer (born 1946-1964), or Xer (born 1965-present) -- defines who you are, what you believe and what you buy. You don't need us to tell you this; you know it instinctively. For nearly 30 years, researchers at Yankelovich Partners, the world-famous research firm, have been compiling comprehensive information about consumers -- their preferences, habits and lifestyles -- mostly for the exclusive proprietary use of Yankelovich's corporate clients. In order to prepare this remarkable book, two leading Yankelovich analysts have mined that incredibly deep data to generate an unprecedented wealth of marketing information about the three active consumer generations: Generation X, the Boomers and the Matures. Rocking the Ages provides marketers with the strategies they need to understand and target these incredibly cohesive groups, including specific data on where they live, what they earn, what they buy and what motivates them to buy. Brimming with graphs and charts -- and real-life, real-product examples of families, individuals and their buying patterns -- Rocking the Ages is the definitive guide to targeting your business's products and services to your ideal consumers. Founded by Dan Yankelovich in 1958, Yankelovich Partners, the nation's leading consumer research organization, has published each year since 1971 a proprietary report on consumer behavior, The Yankelovich MONITOR, and has also provided highly specialized custom research for corporate clients, as well as public opinion research for Time (for 22 years) and Time/CNN (since 1989).

THE POWER OF GENERATIONS

There is an ancient proverb: "Men resemble the times more than they do their fathers." Within the wisdom of those words lie the seeds of generational marketing. Marketers who use the principles of generational marketing to understand the factors that influence the values and buying motivations of consumers stand a much better chance of spotting trends way ahead of the competition and reaching customers first in profitable new ways.

Members of a generation are linked through the shared life experiences of their formative years-things like pop culture, economic conditions, world events, natural disasters, heroes, villains, politics, and technology-experiences that create bonds tying the members of a generation together into what social scientists were the first to call "cohorts." Because of these shared experiences, cohorts develop and retain similar values and life skills as they learn what to hold dear and how to go about doing things. This affects everything from savings and sex to a good meal and a new car.

GENERATIONAL MARKETING

Generational marketing is a strategic business perspective that studies these cohort effects and highlights what's relevant for better business decision-making. Consider a couple of examples.

When Betty Crocker introduced a line of completely ready-to-bake cake mixes in the 1950s, sales were disappointing. Those were the days of the stay-at-home mothers whom today we call the Matures. To Matures, who grew up in the Depression and sacrificed to achieve victory in World War II, hard work was a virtue. Anything too easy was suspect. Convenience seemed like cheating. Eventually, after applying this insight, Betty Crocker found success with a modified version that required adding an egg. This appealed to the Mature housewife's sense that a little work was a lot better.

Seagram found sales of its whiskeys slipping in the early 1970s. The reason: Baby Boomers weren't drinking as much as their parents. Mainly, though, they were in a hurry. Boomers were too impatient to "learn" to enjoy liquor or to wait to develop a taste for scotch. After some trenchant marketing research determined that young people were looking for something easier to drink, Seagram responded by concentrating its marketing on a new line of white spirits, like vodka. These could be mixed with juices or sodas, and appealed to the Boomer demand for easy access to pleasure and enjoyment. Vodka did not demand an acquired taste.

As these examples illustrate, the marketplace always evolves in response to the different needs of each generation. The values, preferences and behaviors of consumers can be understood-and shifts better predicted-by breaking down what accounts for them into three distinct elements: (1) Life stage, (2) Current social and economic conditions, and (3) Formative cohort experiences.

Life stage is how old you are and, therefore, where you are in your life-physically or psychologically. We need different products and services as our responsibilities and requirements in life change.

Current conditions are those events that affect what you can buy. Layoffs, recessions, import/export restrictions, political turmoil, technological innovations, taxes, and so forth, all set parameters within which consumers operate in the marketplace.

Most influential, though, are the formative cohort experiences we all share as part of a generation. These create the habits that define and differentiate generations, the unifying experiences through which each of us views the world and participates in the marketplace. These formative experiences shared with your cohorts are the filter through which you interpret all subsequent experiences.

Every generation will pass through the same life stages-getting a driver's license, going through the joy and pain of parenthood, confronting the uncertainties of retirement. Similarly, no matter which generation we belong to, we all must deal with the same circumstances-economic downturns, wars, or World Series, But each generation-Matures, Boomers, and Xers-responds to these life stages and circumstances in ways determined by that critical third factor-the early shared experiences that helped form the values and life skills of their generational cohort.

We are certainly not suggesting that marketers ignore crucial factors like demographics, economics, or anything else with obvious impact on your business. But we do not believe that you can truly understand your customers without knowing what makes them tick-the generation they belong to is a big part of who they are.

When you develop a marketing strategy, it is important to understand how old your customers are and whether the economy is booming or not. But this is just not enough. Matures and Boomers have responded differently to economic recessions over the last two decades, recessions they have both faced at the same time. Same economic pressures, different consumption patterns. As we'll see, Boomers will look nothing like Matures when they reach retirement; Xers today look nothing like the Boomers of twenty or thirty years ago. Same life stages, different consumers. Generational marketing won't explain everything, but it will explain a lot, and help us better understand the ways in which different individuals will react very differently to the very same marketplace.

Borrowing loosely from social science terminology, we call the events that define a generation "markers." Think of markers as the key set of collective experiences that shape a generation's values and attitudes. These set the tone for a generation, give it direction, provide it with whatever sense of cohesion it has.

For the older generation, the Matures, some of the most significant markers are the Depression, the New Deal, World War II, and the GI Bill. For Boomers they include the Great Society, general economic prosperity and the expansion of suburbia, Nixon, color TV, and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. For the current crop of young people, Generation X, they include divorce, AIDS, Sesame Street, MTV, crack cocaine, Game Boy, and the PC.

Markers help us see why past is not prologue. You make a mistake if you assume that just because your customers are turning a certain age they will behave in the same ways as those who turned that age before them. As obvious as this may seem, it is one of the most common mistakes made in marketing planning.

For instance, a marketer who bases sales and advertising strategy strictly on demographic data, like age, might assume that Baby Boomers will abandon the Rolling Stones and switch from Coca-Cola as they pass their fiftieth birthdays in the years ahead. This would have major implications for the music and beverage industries. However, a smart marketer who considers generational cohorts knows that these deeply implanted preferences are sticking with Boomers as they pass through each life stage.

Don't assume that Boomers will behave like Matures when they reach fifty. Life stage is not everything. When the Boomers began to turn thirty-five, predictions were rife that...

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Excerpted from Rocking the Ages by J. Walker Smith Copyright © 2003 by J. Walker Smith
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.