The Net Generation

According to marketers, a new generation is born: the Net Generation. They can also be called “Generation Y”, “Echo Boomers” or “Millenium Generation”, as it is explained in an article from Business Week.
This is a really interesting segment for marketers, who try more and more to understand them and especially to find out their needs.

- Demographic profile: as it is said in an article of Fortune, this segment concerns the people born after 1977 (under 29). I think we can say that the minimum age to be put in this segment is around 4, the age where children begin to understand what happens and can have some preferences and tastes. Nowadays they are exposed to marketing strategies very soon, especially through the television. They belong to middle-class or wealthier classes, and they have a real consuming power.

- Psychographic profile: They are very aware of trends and fashion. Most of them have very strong opinions about what is “out” or not, and they have a high influence on their parents (if they are not independent yet). As the journalist of Fortunes underlines it, they all want to change the world. They seem very independent from their parents in matters of opinions and tastes, often rejecting what the former generation liked. They use new technologies very easily and they are extremely pragmatic, as it is said in Business Week.
I think there is a very interesting paradox which appears in these two articles: these children are very idealist (they want to change the world) and meanwhile pragmatic (they already have long-term plans). That shows that even if they are rather mature comparatively to their parents at their age, they are still children with all that it means: they are not totally disconnected from the “fairy-tale” world that they see in all children books and Walt Disney films. It think this is quite relieving because these kids who are informatic geniuses and active consumers can be sometimes a little frightening, and I think it is important for children to have a “innocent soul” as long as possible

- Behavioural profile: they do a lot of activities outside of school/work: sports, music, and of course shopping. They do not like to be said what to buy or not. That is why they are not so fond of the traditionnaly popular brands (like Nike) and they prefer more subtle ways of advertisement. I do not totally agree with that point (developped in the Fortune’s article) because I think these brands will always have a strong power over the segment. Teenagers like to identify themselves with brands and logos.

- The underlying needs of the Net Generation: they have a strong need of identity which they express a lot through shopping. They also want to be successul in life with a work that they really like and a happy family life. I think what they are looking for when they shop is a brand which has a real ethics (they are for instance very sensitive to environment problems) and also a very strong and original identity. They need to find marks because it is easy to feel insecure especially when they enter so young in the “adult world”.

In my opinion, this process of describing segments is very interesting because it requires thinking very deeply. However it is also difficult for two reasons: firstly, I feel like what I say is very subjective, based on what I personnaly saw in real life or read in the articles. Secondly, a marketing segment is by definition not entirely homogeneous.
As a conclusion, I think that this is really a psychological work and that is what I find interesting in marketing. It can be the first step before launching quantitative and qualitative studies: first trying to build hypothesis about the segment just from articles and personal thinking, and then try to confirm or infirm them thanks to figures.