Walk into any pet “box store” today and it’s a whole new experience. Prior to purchasing today’s canine’s lunch, you need to know age and size of your dog. If you don’t know these two critical facts, shopping experience could be a very frustrating one. In a store I recently visited in UK, actual merchandising was based on age of dog. Generational marketing has hit pet store.

Generational Marketing! Generational marketing is big business, days of targeting lifestyle groups is being replaced by setting your store up to market to a specific age group. Toy retailers and some bookstores have been into generational marketing for many years, as has fashion industry, but this concept of marketing is now spreading across all retail sectors.

So how do you split up your merchandising to attract specific age groups? Firstly, what groups are out there that you need to be aware of?

Generational Marketing- The Main Groups Researchers are now splitting community into very specific age groups for marketing purposes.

Generation Y This group are today’s teenagers and those in their very early twenties. They are very specific in their purchasing decisions and need to perceive a retail business and its product range as “cool.” It is difficult to integrate desires of this group into most retail stores and as a result, in many retail sectors, companies have set up specific stores just to attract this target group.

Music, mood, colour and style are all very specific to this group to ensure they have right retail experience.

Generation X, IKEA Babies This mid twenties to mid thirties age group is a big “power house” when it comes to buying. IKEA, Swedish furniture lifestyle company built a global business targeting this group and as a result, their founder is now richest man in world.

IKEA babies are happy to spend for value. Their idea of value is that it is a lifestyle statement that literally comes in a box. They can take it home and create an instant statement. They are looking for lifestyle fashion statements and expect retailer they frequent to be in tune with latest fashion colours, styles and trends.

This computer literate group expects quality customer service. Talk down to them and you’ll probably lose them for life.

The Jones Generation This 35 to 49 year old age group is a busy lot, they want an experience when they go shopping, but are time poor and if you waste their time you’ll be crossed off their visit list.

They are experimenters; they are shopping for new and exciting ideas and quickly get bored with retailers who, in their view, are not keeping them entertained with new ideas and new ways of putting old products together.

Was display working? I’m afraid not. Why wasn't it working? Because person building display did not start with a picture of consumer in mind.

Generational marketing In recent months there have been number of articles in press about generational marketing. What does this mean? It means that as a retailer you need to consider who to target. Is it Generation Y (15-25 year-olds), Generation X (25-35 year-olds), Jones’ Generation (35-49 year-olds), Baby Boomers (50-65 year-olds), or Greying Tigers (over 65 years-old).

A flick through a glossy magazine will soon reveal that marketers are very defined on who their target is and present pictorial or promotion accordingly. But, it’s more than marketers getting message across, it’s display teams understanding message and merchandising accordingly.

The challenges This does present some challenges. Traditionally, merchandisers have presented products to consumers based on specific categories i.e. placing all of one series of products together. But is this answer in future?

Some retailers have an easy task. They have refined their retailing to already attract one specific age group and can merchandise accordingly. The real challenge occurs when you are a retailer who needs to attract customers from across a wide band of age groups.

If you fall into this latter category, then there is a real argument for splitting up product categories based on target age groups.

In scenario mentioned at beginning of this article, merchandiser had built display based on an overall product category. The result, in my opinion, was that all age groups were put off, because display did not appeal to any specific age group.

The display manager would have had more success if she had built a display based on a specific age group.