GENERATION X MARKETING FOR SERVICE INDUSTRIES

Generation X Marketing for Service Industries

Abstract

The segment labelled as Generation X is attracting the attention of marketers because of its increasing spending power. Studies indicate that this segment likes convenience, is future oriented, and is independent in thinking and diverse. The members of this segment like to consume out, have school debts and scrounge extensively from parents. Because of these characteristics, certain industries more than other ones would advantage from utilising the right schemes to goal these consumers. The purpose of this paper is to describe the consumer's cohort called Generation X (or baby busters), and to recommend advertising strategies targeted at this segment to three specific services industries: restaurants, banking, and credit cards.

Generation X Marketing for Service Industries

Introduction

Service commerce spend extensively on advertising. Previously published research on services advertising(both empirical and conceptual) has been limited mostly to the area of professional services advertising (Dyerand Shimp 1980; Heishcmidt and Elfrink 1991; Zinkhanand Cheng 1992) and more recently Stafford and Day(1995) addressed message, media and service issues related to retail services advertising). None of these studies although, addressed matters associated to targeting services advocating in the direction of a exact segment of consumers whose size is substantial enough to warrant special attention. The focus of this paper is to succinctly recount the characteristics of the assembly labeled as "Generation X", to describe advocating schemes chased by the three foremost service industries that are considerably impacted by the growing size of the generation X segment: bistros, banks and borrowing cards and to recommend exact advocating strategies to these exact industries to appeal business from this potentially untapped market.

GENERATION X

Generation X: Who Are They?

Generation X is the term granted to the birth dearth, those born in the sixties and seventies, the valley between the Baby Boomers and the boomers' young kids, the boomlet. The Baby Boomers began in 1946 and peaked in1957. For lifetime X, the trough is furthermore quite conspicuous as 1973. Although demographers have different endpoints for the Generation X phenomena, the timeframe we have chosen is 1963-1980. After 1980, the boomlet apparently erupted.

Generation Xers also have been termed the Baby Busters (the bust after the boom so to speak), the thirteenth generation (the thirteenth generation to know the U.S. Flag and the Constitution), the twenty-something's (tongue-in-cheek after the boomers' TV show Thirty Something's in the mid-80s), slackers, grunge kids, COCOES (Children of Contradictory Experiences), YIFFIES (Young, Individualist, Freedom-Minded, and Few) and the Lost Generation. Ohmae called them "Nintendo Kids" while Saatchi called them the "Bellweather Generation." (a lifetime that portends an underlying change in buyer attitudes). The Canadians call their type, the "Disillusioned Generation." The GenXers have been impacted by the pessimism of the 1970s, the cynicism of the 1980s and the skepticism of the 1990s.

The mystery in comprehending GenXers can be summarized by their dysfunctional upbringing. They were the first generation of latchkey children, conveyed up throughout the break-up of the atomic ...