consumer trends

I had to laugh when Marketing magazine had a headline "Millennials look for experiences over possessions." I thought that I had read something like that before and then remembered a blog posting back in 2008 that said something very similar only this time it was about Boomers.

You should read this research from Gallup. 

As the title suggests, it reckons that US Baby Boomers are spending - certainly more than they did a year ago.

It's early January and that means one thing - forecasts for the coming year.

I have this image of the poor sods that have to come up with these insights huddled in a room in late December trying to come up with something interesting to say. Time is running out and they default to rehashing the forecasts from the previous year or the one before that. In this case, the ones from a decade before.

“Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again.”
–Barbra Streisand

Nielsen reckons that America’s “Mass Affluent” represent 12% of US households but enjoy an outsized 26% of the nation’s total wealth.
Who are the mass affluent? According to Nielsen? It is households with between between $250,000 and $1,000,000 in liquid assets.

The media (and hence politicians) in Europe and the US have been obsessed with income inequality and getting everybody to pay their 'fair share' of taxes and all of that stuff. By the time these stories hit the headlines it is old new to half decent marketers.

Pabst Blue Ribbon ("PBR") is a 100 year old+ beer brand and one of 25 labels just bought by an investor renowned for his ability to make old brands profitable again. I want to give him the benefit of some dim insights, though it's proving much harder than I expected.

by: Dick Stroud

Marketing Week has an article about the age and regional variation in the TNS/Nationwide consumer confidence measure (Nationwide Consumer Confidence Index). This is the measure most often quoted in the UK – something similar to the Conference Board in the US.

The article focuses on the changes in this index during the past 3 quarters and what it tells us about the way that different age groups react to our present financial Armageddon.