The problem with generational stereotypes

1 min read

Whole Foods’ Misguided Play for Millennials - HBR

This is the problem with traditional segmentation approaches.  By relying on demographics to define a consumer base, executives are implicitly, or explicitly, saying that all people of a certain demographic (in this case the same age cohort) are the same and that they are also distinctly different from everyone in other demographics. As most people will tell you from their own experience, this thinking is fundamentally flawed. This flawed approach applies not just to Whole Foods but to any business.

The idea that there are monlithic cohorts, based on age, moving through the generational cycle has always troubled me. It's not that there aren't some characteristics that are more common within the different age cohorts, but that we paint with such a broad brush. We lose sight of the fact that these cohorts are creations of our own imagination and arbitrary ticks on a birth timeline.