Consuming FashionReport: Baby Boomers as a Fashion Consumer Group

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON Winchester School Of Arts

Consuming Fashion Visual Report

Baby Boomers as a Fashion Consumer Group

Report written by – Mengxuan Zhang Degree of Study – BA Fashion Marketing Date Submitted – 16/03/2012

1. Introduction 2. Aims and Objectives 3. Baby Boomers as a Fashion Consumer Group 3.1 Leading Edge Baby Boomers 3.2 Trailing Edge Baby Boomers and Generation Jones 4. Target Group: Women of Generation Jones 4.1 Demographic Segmentation 4.2 Psychographic Segmentation 5. Customer Pen Portrait 6. The Motivations and Purchasing Behaviour 6.1 Social Context of Motivation 6.2 Reference Groups Influence 7. Future Opportunities and Challenges 8. Bibliography

Table of Contents

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The baby boomer is defined as people born during the baby boom after World War II (1946-1964). In recent years, the generation has become known as the fastest growing and affluent group in the economy. Following the global longevity boom, many of fashion retailers are shifting their eye from youth markets to baby boom generation consumers. Although numerous fashion trends emerged in 1960s and 1970s, the significant buying behaviour of boomers is no longer considered to be trendsetting, but to be reasonably fashionable.

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The younger baby boomers born between 1954-1965 are also known as Generation Jones. The generation Jones that carries a huge amount of economic clout is a tremendous potential market in the fashion universe. This generation’s sense of fashion differs from that of younger consumers. For instance, women in this generation are more likely to be following the fashion of actresses such as Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman, rather than the skinny and svelte Lindsay Lohan (Taposh, 2006).

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The aim of this report is to adapt marketing theories to the investigation of the purchasing behaviour of people in the baby boom generation. Firstly, I will identify this generation as a fashion consumer group. Then, the female Generation Jones will be analysed as a specific potential group from demographic and psychographic aspects, and followed with a pen portrait of their lifestyle. The motivations and buying behaviour of this group will be studied, and the future opportunities for and challenges of media promotion in this area will be examined.

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In the United States, approximately 78 million were born between 1946 and 1964 and named as baby boomers (Stibich, 2011). They created many waves in the historical development of the fashion industry and are still considered as a special consumer group today. Following normal aging process, many boomers will reach retirement age soon and therefore become what is known as ‘Empty Nesters’. However, those born in this generation seem more active and fitter than their predecessors, and pay more attention to the quality of life issues, health and fashion. This generation has been at the leading edge of trendsetting for many years and, as fashion consumers, they are not stopping now. Many of them follow the latest fashions in footwear and follow trends in leisure and causal wear.

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3.1 Leading Edge Baby Boomers (1946-1954) Leading edge baby boomers are defined as those born between 1946 and 1954. Historically, they had an enormous effect on 1960s fashion. The fashion trends and subcultures established in the sixties include groups such as the Beatles, and movements like the hippies, mods and rockers.

Today, Leading Edge Baby Boomers are middle-aged people between 58 and 66, and generally have reached or will soon attain retirement age. For economic reasons and because of their age limitations, some of them have given up following fashion trends and tend to purchase clothes for the sake of comfort and durability. This, in turn, has boosted the development of supermarket clothing brands, such as Florence & Fred, George and TU. Nevertheless, a number of elderly boomers are fashion followers, comprising professionals, householders or singletons, and are concentrated in the upper and middle classes. They have their own styles and fashion principles, and are one of the main consumer groups of luxury products.

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3.2 Trailing Edge Baby Boomers (19541965) and Generation Jones (1954-1965)

Trailing Edge Baby Boomers consist of the younger boomers born between 1954 and 1965.

Sociologist Jonathan Pintel pointed out the distinction of elder boomers and younger boomers, and named younger boomers as Generation Jones, a generation with a different mindset. Differences among Leading Edge Baby Boomers, Generation Jones and Generation X are shown in Table 1 from the report of NTA (National Tour Association) in 2002. Many Joneses are also known for a Table 1- Distinctions Among Leading Edge Baby ‘keeping up with the Jones’ Boomers, Generation Jones and Generation X competitiveness, because it was a time when shopping became less personalised and the phenomenon of boutiques arose. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan commented on the decade that ‘the luxuries of the rich have become the necessities of the poor’. Their sense of fashion was affected by the trends in 1970s and early 1980s, which included Glam Rock, Punk, Heavy Metal and the New Romanticism movement.

Currently, Joneses have reached the ages between 48 and 59. Even though most of them are moving away from their past trends and gradually become consumers of ‘acceptable fashion’ items, they still capture a share of marketers’ attention due to their large population number. Research carried out by Carat indicated that Generation Jones occupies 20% of the UK adult population.

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4. Target Group: Women of Generation Jones

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4.1 Demographic Segmentation

Graph 1- Female Boomers who survived until 2004, UK

Graph 2- Average retirement ages of women in 2005, Europe

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The post–World War II baby boom had an impact on many places around the world. The population is highly distributed in western countries such as United States, United Kingdom and Canada and consists of more white boomers than black ones. The majority of them have a long life expectancy, which is illustrated in Graph 1 ‒ the number of female boomers born between 1946 and 2004 in the UK. This cohort of children grew up in a different world from that of leading baby boomers.

Their parents had given them high expectations and enabled them to emerge as an educated middle class. Also, they often have a core belief in religion. The next phenomenon that can be observed, and

as can be seen from Graph 2 showing the average retirement ages of women across Europe, is that most of the women

in this cohort have remained in the workforce. Again in Canada, women baby boomers comprise 35% of senior workers (Statistics Canada, 2007).

In Europe, those Joneses born after 1953 have the same State Pension Age and default retirement age as older people (Pearson, 2011).

To d a y, t h e y a r e working in a variety of jobs and some of them are the backbone of enterprises. In addition, female Joneses tend to get married at a younger age. Many boomers married the secondary school or college (1822 year-olds) in the UK. In the same way as in Canada, The average age for their first marriage w as 23.2 years in 1940 and it had come down to 21.1 years by 1965 (Statistics Canada, 2007). In general, this section of women usually has a good family status, and some of them have active roles as mothers or grandmothers.

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4.2 Psychographic Segmentation The Baby Boomers are unlike any other generation before them and not just because of their great number.

They lead active lives, they know what they want out of life, they ask questions, make demands of society and they will continue to do so into old age. ‒ Hello Boomers Magazine ‘Older boomers got the best education, housing and jobs, and their shadow fell far down into the age structure, making things difficult for those even 10 years younger than the youngest boomer (Leading edge baby boomer)’, baby boomer expert Cheryl Russel stated. Certainly Joneses are different enough to be a separate generation, and the distinction becomes obvious in the psychographic segment. Both older and younger boomers share a common time of upbringing and values such as the belief in a meritocracy, respect for knowledge and a lack of respect for authority (Wellner, 2000). But Joneses expressed a narcissistic preoccupation with themselves that is expressed in their self-help movement (Schewe, etc., 2000).

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Observing their attitudes and priorities, Daniel Yankelovich, a public opinion analyst and social scientist, noted that 66% of Joneses tended to plan five to ten years ahead, compared with only 49% of leading boomers; 46% Joneses said they planned to take a special holiday in a given year, compared with 33% of elder boomers (Wellner, 2000).

Today’s Joneses seem to treat the decades ahead as a second life as they feel much younger than predecessors did at the same age. They carry multiple credit cards, backpack around the world, have Facebook accounts and write blogs. They are interested in fashion magazines, enjoy gardening and betting, and participate in golf and yoga courses. They are working, volunteering, and often operating homeb a s e d businesses.

In fashion consumption, female Joneses are complete spenders, and it is simply because they assume that they can always g e t money in a variety of ways, such as taking out a second mortgage on a house.

In addition, they are far more likely to be active than their male counterparts.

After many years of experience, they have built up their fashion tastes and principles and continually spend money on fashion every year. The elite woman in this generation does not convey her wealth to others. ‘They have found a way to be artists and still drive a Lexus, be dippy hippies and multinational corporate fat cats at the same time’, David Brooks wrote in American Newsweek (2000).

Moreover, they are a so-called ‘nearly retired consumer group’ with enough money to support their spending on apparel. In America, boomer women spend about $30.8 billion (£19.7 billion GBP) on clothing a year, which is almost double the amount of apparel spending ($16.5 billion≈£10.5 billion GBP) for women in Generation X (Seckler, 2004).

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5. Customer Pen Portrait

The target consumer group is women in generation Jones who have reached ages between 48 and 59 with enough disposable income to support the apparel spending. They enjoy their life and have a happy family. They carry multiple credit cards, have mobile phones, dirve family cars, and are active on the Internet.

They interested in traveling, shopping, exercising, and follow their own music icons. In fashion consumption, they are loyalty to brands they like, while open to items from other brands.

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6. The Motivations and Purchasing Behaviour

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eneration Joneses’ needs and drives are the main motivation in their buying behaviour. The consumer needs can be subdivided into physiological needs and psychological needs.

The former is more of an individual factor, while the latter can be driven by a multitude of internal and external influences, such as social belonging or peer pressure.

Jackson, T. and Shaw, D. (2009) observed that the middle and upper layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is significant in fashion promotion. This includes social needs, esteem needs and selfactualisation needs, and all of these belong to the psychological needs of a consumer.

In the buying behaviour segment, there are four core sections that have an impact on female Joneses. These are user occasion, benefits wanted, loyalty level and readiness to purchase. The first one relates to buying products for specific occasions, like eveningwear, outdoors pursuits, sports garments, etc. It is a crucial segment because generally the

elderly have more leisure time than younger generations, so it would be expected that Joneses might have more chances to purchase for a variety of activities. In relation to ‘benefits wanted’, female boomers love to look for sales and often attracted to promotional offers.

They collect vouchers and coupons, and are willing to avail of discounts for their age bracket. Moreover, they are not only attracted to favorable prices, but also high quality of products and good customer service. The third section, ‘loyalty level’, is also an important one. Cognitive dissonance can be an invisible motive for consumers.

According to Dissonance Theory, the higher the price paid by the consumer, the greater is her/ his tendency to like the brand as well as develop a loyally for it (Foxall, 1979). The last segment, ‘readiness to purchase’, relates to the behaviour of those Joneses who shop infrequently for clothes, have less interest in shopping, and either head straight for their required items or buys mainly for replacement purposes.

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Table 2 – Qualitative research insights into the 50+ market

However, the decision-making process of boomers differs greatly from that of other generations. For example, they are more questioning to marketers and often pay attention to the written product description.

Table 2 from the report of House of Lords in 2005 shows the characteristics of boomers’ decision-making processes.

6.1 Social Context of Motivation

Table 3- Social Class and Motivation

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Due to the particular characteristics of groups of different social and economic statuses, marketers targeting female Joneses sub-divide them by social class. For example, middle class Joneses woman tends to focus more on styling compared to the upper class Joneses, who pay more attention to branding and clothes details in the buying process. Meanwhile, consumers in lower classes will consider prices and the physical elements of the goods more. In research carried out

by American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) in 1999, baby boomers were divided into five levels on the basis of their attitudes and behaviour relating to retirement. These levels are: the Strugglers, the Anxious, the Enthusiasts, the Self-reliants and the Traditionalists. The levels also apply to the social context motivation of their constituents.

The Strugglers amounted to 9% of baby boomers and comprised 64% of women and 36% of men. The fashion motivation of this lowest income group (ÂŁ19,183+/-) is likely to address the safety needs in the Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. In the next level, the annual income of the Anxious (23%) and Enthusiasts(13%) is more than double that of the Strugglers, and their motives can be said to be social belonging needs as well as esteem needs. The Self-reliants (30%) and Traditionalists (25%) occupy the biggest number of boomers. People in these two groups have a relatively high income and educational level. Their motive appears to be self-actualisation, and most of them are principle-oriented fashion consumers.

6.2 Reference Groups Influence The purchasing behaviour of female Joneses strongly depends on reference groups that include information, utilitarian and value-expressed influences. Testimonials and observations of users have a greater effect on the elderly than on younger consumers. As a result, the Jones’ purchasing decisions are influenced by the references of family and friends, etc. The value-expressed element appears to have less impact on Generation Jones.

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7. Future Opportunities and Challenges in Media Aspect To discover the potential of the Generation Jones market, agencies and fashion retailers should adopt a differentiated marketing strategy for promotion and advertising purposes. Firstly, the advertising campaign should be not just innovative and creative, but also authentic and approachable. Marketers always focus on how to interest Joneses but ignore the significance of gaining their trust. At this point, product features, lifestyle portrayals and functional descriptions should be highlighted in the campaigns, while fantasy and surprise elements should be used sparingly. Additionally, it is believed that visual imagery has a bigger influence than text messages when advertising to baby boomers.

S e c o n d l y, t h e u s e o f great opportunity for elderly web users are web group now. They more frequently, check out more people in other In addition, National D i a r y a North market

Internet advertising is a promotion because the fastest growing browse websites stay longer and pages than generations. a report by Purchase ( N P D ) , American research c o m p a n y, showed that elderly consumers display more online shopping activity than young adults and teenagers (Pastore, 2000). Thus, marketers should pay close attention to Internet media as it is increasingly efficient and effective, and its influence now largely exceeds that of traditional media.

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Furthermore, multimedia advertisements are required. Joneses are technologically adept nowadays. Therefore, promoting on a single platform is short-sighted, and risks not reaching a large amount of potential consumers. Seckler (2004) reported that 30% of baby boomers were influenced by newspaper ads, while 11% were more affected by TV commercials. Magazine ads and articles affected 11% of boomers, and 6% of them were influenced by radio spots.

L a s t l y, t h e s e l e c t i o n o f advertising models is another challenge to marketers, who have to understand that it is unsuitable to use young models in product campaigns aimed at Joneses women. Joneses demand more mature models and are pleased to see people whom they can relate to in advertising campaigns.

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1.

AARP, 1999. Baby Boomers Envision Their Retirement: An AARP Segmentation Analysis. [pdf] Available at: <http://assets.aarp.org/ rgcenter/econ/boomer_seg.pdf> [Accessed on 12 March 2012] 2.

Brooks, D., 2000. Discussion of the Bobo culture: Why bobos Rule, Newsweek, 3 April, pp.

62-63 3.

Foxall, R. G., 1979. Consumer Behaviour: A Practical Guide. 2nd ed. Kent: Croom Helm.

4.

Harris,J., Hyde,S. And Smith, G., 1986. 1966 And All That: Design And The Consumer In Britain 1960- 1969. London: Trefoil Books.

5.

Jackson, T. and Shaw, D., 2009. Fashion Marketing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

6.

NTA(National Tour Assocciation), 2002. Current Assessment Report (CAR) for the Baby Boomer Market [pdf] Available at: <http://www.agingsociety.org/agingsociety/links/car_boomer.pdf> [Accessed on 08 March 2012] 7.

Posner, H., 2011. Marketing Fashion. London: Laurence King Publishing.

8.

Pearson, B., 2011. The myth of the UK baby-boom. [online] (Last updated 26th July 2011) Available at: <http:// blog.barrypearson.co.uk/?p=8> [Accessed on 11 March 2012] 9.

Pastore, M., 2000. Baby Boomers and Seniors Fastest Growing Web Groups. Business Wire [online] (Last updated 4th April 2000) Available at: <http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1702741/baby-boomers-seniors-fastestgrowing-web-groups> [Accessed on 13 March 2012] 10.

Schewe, D. C., Meredith, E. G., Noble, M, S, 2000. Defining moments: Segmenting by cohorts. Marketing Management. Chicago: Fall 2000. Vol. 9, Iss. 3; pg. 48, 6 pgs 11.

Seckler, V., 2004. Will Boomers Come Of Age In Fashion Ads? Agewave. 11August. [online] Available at: <http://www.agewave.com/media_files/wwd.html> [Accessed on 13 March 2012] 12.

Stibich, M., 2011. Many Baby Boomers Turn 65 in 2011. About.com, [online] (Last updated 05th January 2011) Available at: <http://longevity.about.com/od/agingproblems/a/Get-Ready-America.htm> [Accessed on 07 March 2012] 13.

Statistics Canada, 2007. The report of baby boom generation. [online] Available at: <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/ start-debut-eng.html> [Accessed on 11 March 2012] 14.

Taposh, N., 2006. Fashion for the ‘Baby boom’ generation. [online] (Last updated 18th May 2006) Available at: <http://www.styleguru.com/entry/fashion-for-the-baby-boom-generation/> [Accessed on 10 March 2012] 15.

Wellner, S. A., 2000. "Generational Divide". American Demographics. FindArticles.com. [online] (Last updated October, 2000) Available at: <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4021/is_2000_Oct/ai_67001505/?tag=content;col1> [Accessed on 11 March 2012]

8. Bibliography

Table:

Table 1- http://www.agingsociety.org/agingsociety/links/car_boomer.pdf Table 2- House of Lords, 2005. Ageing: Scientific Aspects Volume I：Report 2005-06. Page 252.

Table 3- Foxall, R. G., 1979. Consumer Behaviour: A Practical Guide. 2nd ed. Kent: Croom Helm. Page 147.

Graph 1-The UK population: past, present and future“, figure 1.13, page 11 Graph 2- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10796718

Images:

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