The Baby Boomers They are in their fifties. They still have a major impact on retailing as indicated by large amount of Ray Charles’ music being purchased on his untimely death.

This sector has money, but no time. They are in D.I.M (Do It for Me) sector and have driven new business sectors in landscape design, rent a “hubby” and chefs preparing meals in their homes. They have driven organic food movement and “slow” movement.

They are prepared to pay for someone to remove stress, yet also still want to be involved and are prepared to pay to indulge in fun part of task and to purchase fashion statements.

Greying Tigers This final group are over 60’s. Researchers, a few years ago suggested that this group would be an affluent, stay at home sector and as a result gardening and entertainment would boom,

The home improvement industries have reaped rewards of this growing group but not to extent they thought.

This group of greying tigers is not staying at home. The cruise industry, golf courses, theatre, restaurants and general travel industry have all grown rapidly by targeting this adventurous group.

They are most price sensitive and nostalgic sector of population, but give them a comfortable experience and they will be loyal.

Your Challenge The real challenge with generational marketing is that you need to create excitement and sanctuary for all these groups, often in same building. It’s not easy, especially when you try and mix Greying Tigers with IKEA babies, but get it right and business should blossom.

Ten Generational Marketing Retail Tips

1.Change music style during day to attract different age groups into your store at specific times of day. 2.Have Generation X style workshops on a specific day of week to attract that age group. 3.Have a “discount” day for Greying Tigers on one day a week. You may want to promote this via old peoples’ homes. 4.Use colour theming throughout store to distinguish different zones by use of colour. 5.Provide children’s activity days on a specific day of week to attract Jones Generation. 6.Display products in different combinations to attract different age groups eg: D.I.Y Package D.I.M Package D.I.W Packages (Do It With Me) 7.Promote services from your store to attract Baby Boomers. This may be a window cleaning service in a curtain category or a landscape design service in a garden centre. 8.Read magazines that are targeted to different age groups, so you’re aware of what they are being exposed to. 9.Make sure printed signs are in bigger print when targeting Greying Tigers. 10.Keep changing; your consumers are.

Where do you start? Start with customer in mind, not product. Have a defined age group in your mind when you’re building a display and then build display with that age group in mind.

Let me give you a simple example based on my observations when it comes to signage on displays. Generation X (I prefer to call them IKEA Babies) know what trends are and what is fashionable. If you sign a product to tell them what is new and trendy, they could feel you are talking down to them and this may resist purchasing.

The next generation up, Jones’ Generation, want to be trendy and fashionable, but they need to be told what’s new. If you don’t tell them what’s new, they may never discover it.

The Baby Boomers tend to pick up trends later. Tell them it’s new and they will often wait while it’s accepted by Jones’ Generation. Greying Tigers may resist new products completely as they look on product as a new gadget which they don’t understand and that will quickly go out of fashion anyway.

Segmentation opportunities Some retailers will go to considerable expense to get formulae right. Wetherby’s in South Africa have divided their store into two. One half is targeted at Baby Boomers and other half at Generation X. Both groups walk through same entrance, but are then split into two, Baby Boomers turn left into store, whilst Generation X turn right. Both sections of store have their own coffee shop to ensure both consumer segments ‘linger longer’ in comfort of their own generational group.

Become a maven of retail generational marketing Encourage your retail team to become “mavens” or leaders of a trend. Make sure that business subscribes to magazines that target each generational group you are targeting. Get team to produce ‘storyboards’ on trends from those magazines that can help them build appropriate displays.

One display will not serve all, start with customer in mind and build displays that a generation can relate to.