All Millennials Are Not The Same
You are probably familiar with the construct of generations that divides all people into groups based on the (approximate) year they were born. These generational groups are then used as a reference for marketing purposes in business to understand customer behaviour, to be able to market and sell to them more efficiently.
These groups of people have names such as Boomers and Millennials for example. What picture do you have in mind right now when thinking of these generations?
Are you imagining a certain age? Do they portray a certain behaviour?
Is age truly the right factor to determine and generalise people’s behaviours, preferences, habits? Does it really work on a global scale the way we tend to assume? I do not think so.
We recognise that certain groups of people have lived through a similar social-economic time and hence developed common behavioural traits and viewpoints.
How we define generations today
Millions of studies are done by thousands of companies every year, analysing people’s behaviours in these age-based groups and trying to predict their future behaviours. All in the name of “serving people more relevant services and products”, aka “understanding how to best sell to people to earn profit and get market share”.
For reference, the generations today are generally defined as such:
- Born between 1946 and -65 are called Boomers.
- Born between 1965 and -1976 are called Gen X.
- Born between 1977 and -95 are called Gene Y aka Millennials.
- Born between 1995 and -2012 we have Gen Z, the Digital Natives.
- The youngest, Gen Alpha, was born between 2013 and approximately until 2035.
It’s important to note that these exact years are flexible and can vary in sources because there is no hard-coded agreement here. So keep that in mind when referencing.
Research performed today by insight agencies, travel and hospitality companies are all seeking to answer the question: where, how and who much will Millennials and Gen Z’s spend? What brands do they like and how can we get their share of wallet?
That’s because Millenials are starting to come into their own and hold senior positions which means higher disposable income to spend on travel. Gen Zs are children of Gen X, carry a high impact on their parent’s holiday decision making.
Before we dive into my scepticism on why this age-based categorisation does not work, I will acknowledge that of course there are valuable insights in analysing people’s behaviours and that we as people need to categorise and simplify information in order to process it.
The simplest way to categorise it is by an age bracket because we recognise that certain groups of people have lived through a similar social-economic time and hence developed common behavioural traits and viewpoints.
I agree with that, we do have a lot of common traits with people of a similar age. And it’s not that I am upset about being called “lazy” or “privileged” or whatever else defines a Millennial these days.
It’s the way the results of these studies are generalised and presented that bothers me. The system is flawed.
The problem is that I am not a Millennial, although I am born in the early '90s
As a white 20-something woman living in Europe, I have been told that, as a Millennial, I am expected to earn a certain amount of money, never work in one company longer than a year, travel to certain destinations, enjoy personalised hiking experiences over group bus tours, and so on.
These generic statements have one thing in common, they do not regard my cultural and economic background. The truth is, I never really fit into the category of a “Millennial” because I wasn’t. (Well, by age I technically am, but that’s the issue.)
I wasn’t born and raised in the modern western world and I didn’t have the childhood and environment that is typically assumed for a Millennial. The formative years, that shaped the way I view the world, were substantially different because of where I was born and raised.
Because of my childhood upbringing in Russia, straight after the fall of the Soviet Union, I had a very different childhood to my European colleagues. To all of my western colleagues, regardless of country.
I never seem to get the TV references or understand specific idioms of the country I live in. When faced with such references, I have found the best example to represent that cultural difference between me and my Gen Y and X colleagues: my baby pictures are black and white, theirs are coloured.
So the main criteria of age, that unites everyone in a generation category, is not considering that subtle cultural difference.
It’s more than just age and we need to make that crystal clear
The purpose of the generational categories is to predict people’s behaviour, to be able to sell the right products and services to them, at the right time. But age is not exactly the main decision-making factor that determines our spending patterns. It’s money.
The income level you have will be the key decision-maker in determining the type of holiday you will take.
Putting aside personal preferences the truth is: if you earn 7,50 pounds an hour your holidays will be a lot less frequent and a lot simpler than if you have an annual salary of even 25k pounds. Regardless of your age. The differences become exponentially larger as the pay grade increases.
It is imperative to note two things front and centre every single time when talking about the generations: the cultural mix represented in the survey and their income level. Not at the footnote or small asterisk, but right front and centre.
A quick search for “millennial behaviours study” shows me the first result from Forbes, a reputable source, titled: “Understanding The Research On Millennial Shopping Behaviors”. Brilliant, but here’s the problem front and centre. The article refers to Millennials and their shopping behaviours but fails to mention who represents the data.
The article itself says that Forbes performed the research themselves, but we are not informed if the Millennials referred to here are US citizens only, what income they have, what kind of minorities are represented or any other demographic factors.
The generations are meant to represent the people in one socio-economic group based on their collective experience of that time. So why do we fail to mention that exact thing?
We’re not all the same
Money is what drives the economy and money is what limits me from taking a month-long holiday to Japan every year flying business class. A Gen X and a Gen Y with the same salary are far more likely to spend their money on a similar kind of holiday than two Gen Ys on minimum wage and an annual salary of 40k would.
On top of the financial difference, it is critical we point out the cultural mix of each survey, to understand how French may think differently from Germans and Swedes. We mustn’t generalise that all Europeans think the same, that all Chinese think the same or that all US citizens think the same. Europeans do not have the same socio-economic background as US citizens.
When we generalise data too much, we lose the meaning of it all. Especially, when trying to hear the voices of the minorities, migrants, expats, and other groups that are often masked behind big data numbers and fancy graphs.
We should spend time looking at the data to draw similarities and differences between the different types of responders and their economic freedom to truly create products and services for people’s needs and the hospitality, travel and tourism economy.
