Market Segmentation: Age and Cohorts
Different media tend to use different categorizations of age-ranges. For instance,
in the UK, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) usually
refers to these age-groups:
- 4-15 (sometimes subdivided into 4-7, 8-11 and 12-15)
- 16-34 (sometimes subdivided into 16-24 and 25-34)
- 35-64 (sometimes subdivided into 35-44, 45-54 and 55-64)
- 65 and over.
Segmentation by age refers not only to age-groups as such but also to cohorts
(groups growing up together during a specific time-period). The most familiar (US-based)
distinctions are as follows:
- Baby-boomers: Those born between 1946 and 1965 (the dates vary from
commentator to commentator);
- Generation X: Those born between
1966 and 1982 (also referred to as Xers or busters);
- Generation Y: Those born later.
As a quick search of the Web will reveal, these terms are widely employed in both
advertising and journalism - where generalizations are often made about their
key characteristics. What sort of generalizations can you find on the Web about
each of these groups?
Here, for instance, is how one Web source describes baby-boomers:
American citizens born in the post-World War II baby boom,
usually defined as 1946-60. Having largely invented youth culture as we
know it in the '60s, baby boomers are now characterized by
an inability to relinquish their grip on it - thus their tendency to
institutionalize the culture of their youth... The peak of the boomers'
power as culture makers came in the '80s, when their middle-aged economic clout made them an
attractive audience (see also Rolling Stone); films like The Big Chill (1983)
and TV series like The Wonder Years (1988) and thirtysomething (1987)
profitably echoed the clash of nostalgia with their adult concerns. The baby
boomers' idyll was brought to an abrupt halt with the advent of so-called
Generation X. It was supposedly an article of faith among this new group
to hate boomers for their economically cushioned passage through youth
and their insistence on prolonging it. The new, media-sanctioned generation gap had arrived.
(source: http://www.plastic.com/article.pl?sid=01/04/06/1958234 - now a dead link)
Are similar generalizations recognizable outside of American culture?
Note that often these labels seem to be simply a means for one
generation to criticize another, but insofar as they are recognized
they can serve as a basis for market segmentation.
Related to this are the jokey quizzes which circulate on
the Internet about whether you are a child of the 80s (or whenever) - based on
cultural phenomena which are familiar only to those whose
adolescent years were spent in the relevant decade (e.g. music, ads, films,
TV programmes). Knowing which of these
to allude to in ads is one key to market segmentation in relation to age cohorts.
If you wanted to distinguish between those whose adolescence was spent in the
1970s, 1980s or 1990s which might be the most distinctive (global) cultural
phenomena of each decade which you could build an ad upon? Could you devise an
online quiz which would reliably distinguish between each group without asking
their age or date-of-birth?
Young Audiences for Advertisers: Psychographic Clusters
- Trendies: who crave the admiration of their peers
- Egoists: who seek pleasure
- Puritans: who wish to feel virtuous
- Innovators: who wish to make their mark
- Rebels: who wish to remake their world in their own
image
- Groupies: who just want to be accepted
- Drifters: who are not sure what they want
- Drop-outs: who shun commitments of any kind
- Traditionalists: who want things to stay as they are
- Utopians: who want the world to be a better place
- Cynics: who have to have something to complain about
- Cowboys: who want easy money
[Selby 1995, p. 25]
Suggested Reading
- Acuff, Dan (1997)
What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids. New York: Free Press
- Del Vecchio, Gene (1997)
Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer's Guide to a Kid's Heart. Gretna: Pelican
- Griffiths, Merris (2001)
'An Industry Perspective' (marketing toys to boys and girls) [WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/FM21920/ad_industry.doc
- Gunter, Barrie & Adrian Furnham (1992)
Consumer Profiles: An Introduction to Psychographics. London: Routledge
- Selby, Keith & Ron Cowdery (1995)
How to Study Television. London: Macmillan
- Weiss, Michael J. (2000)
The Clustered World: How We Live, What We Buy and What It All Means About Who We Are. Boston, MA: Little, Brown
- Zollo, Peter (1995)
'The Cosmetics Category: Talking to Teens' (American Demographics magazine) [WWW document] URL
http://www.ecrm-epps.com/Expose/V3_3/V3_3_A8.asp
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!