My Generation: Hope I Shop Before I Get Old

This is the title of an article in the NY Times. You might need to register to read (Free).

I am still not sure if the journalist has written a spoof article or if they are serious. The premise is that Generation X (1965 to 1977) have taken to spending on luxuries in a big way.

To start with the article treats the idea of Generational Marketing with the contempt it deserves: “It was a useful fiction, the idea of Generation Xers - a way to create a homogeneous group out of 48 million people who, in hindsight, may have had very little in common except their youth”. She goes on to say: “At the same time, we finally do have something that unites us: shopping. It has become the defining occupation of my generation.”

The rest of the article then lists and discusses they type of things these 48 million people are buying (flat-screen TV's, Bugaboo Frog strollers with matching parasol and diaper bag, Treo phones, Miele dishwashers, Dualit toasters, Marc Jacobs handbags, Sigerson Morrison shoes and our Land Rovers).

Of course what the journalist really means is these are the sorts of products that she and her friends are buying, or more likely wish they were buying. Attempting to attribute consumer characteristics to 48 million people is only one worse than trying to do it to 76 million (baby boomers) people. Generational marketing should be removed from the business sections of book stores and put into the fiction category, where it belongs. Dick Stroud www.20plus30.com