Marketers spend too little and too much time considering consumer age.

I thought Marketing Week must have made a mistake and republished an article from five, maybe ten years back (Behaviour versus demographics: Why the term ‘millennial’ is useless).

But no, they have published yet another article explaining what I assumed even the dimmest marketer understood.  I quote:

Marketers need to focus more on consumer behaviour rather than segmenting people simply by generation, according to two new studies.

I bet there will be another article along the same lines in 2017 and 2018 and 2020.

Why do people keep doing these studies to prove what we already know. It would be like science journals keep publishing 'new research' to explain the basics of gravity.

Come on guys. How about moving on, let's all agree that generational marketing is good fun but little value and see if we can say something new.

Let me offer my take. It is vital to understand the differences between the generations. Yep, you read that correctly. Physiological ageing does affect the way consumers act and so you had better understand it. So on one hand we have to take it seriously (physical ageing) and on the other (attitudes and behaviour) it is of little value. Got it? Dick Stroud