by: Dick Stroud
According to Gartner, in 10 years the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experience associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple anonymous online personas than marketing and selling offline.
Gartner believes that general behaviour, attitudes and interests start to blend together in an online environment, which is a bit of a pain if you segment your market on the basis of age. As Gartner says
However, as more baby boomers (who are living longer) and the younger generations go online and participate/communicate in a flat virtual environment, the generational distinctions break down. Customers will hop across segments at various times of life for various reasons and are likely to act like several generations at any given time.
That’s the main thrust of the argument. This is an interesting commentary about the implications of Gen V.
Cut out all of the hype and what Gartner is saying is that marketing is becoming age-neutral and is being driven by the interests and behaviours of people. It has taken this esteemed consultancy a long time to come to this conclusion – perhaps they bought a copy of my book?
Original Post: http://www.20plus30.com/blog/2007/11/ditch-your-age-segmentation-target.html
