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III. The Family Unit and Age Subcultures
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: Describe your family structure. Would you say that it is
traditional? What impact does your family structure have on purchasing? How could an
advertiser design an ad to appeal to your family? What would be in that ad?
A. The Modern Family
1. Intentional families are groups of unrelated people who meet regularly for meals and
who spend holidays together.
2. The extended family was once the most common family unit. It consisted of three
generations living together and often included the grandparents, but aunts, uncles, and
cousins.
3. The nuclear family—a mother, father, and one or more children—became the
modern family.
4. The U.S. Census Bureau regards any occupied housing unit as a household,
regardless of the relationships between the people who live there.
Discussion Opportunity—Ask students to write down their definition of “family.” Compare the
answers with the rest of the class. How does this definition match with alternative lifestyles?
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: Why is it important for marketers to know how to define a family?
What difference does it make to an e-marketer?
*****Use Consumer Behavior Challenge Here *****
Discuss #18
5. The economy has affected families, increasing the number of children who live with
grandparents and the incidence of boomerang kids (children who return home after
college instead of getting their own places.
6. Middle-aged people have been labeled the Sandwich Generation by some because
they support the generations above and below them.
7. Family size depends on such factors as educational level, the availability of birth
control, and religion.
8. Demographers define the fertility rate as the number of births per year per 1,000
women of childbearing age.
a. The fertility rate increased dramatically in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when
parents of baby boomers reached childbearing age.
b. When Baby Boomers had their own children, it was a baby boomlet in the 1980s.
9. Childless couples, including those who define themselves as voluntarily childless, are
an attractive segment for some companies. DINKS (dual income, no kids) couples are
better educated on average than those with kids are.
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: Is the phenomenon of “boomerang kids” new? What brought the
kids back to the nest in previous years? If you are a “boomeranger,” describe your situation and
why you returned. Why is this phenomenon important to marketers?
Discussion Opportunity—Watch TV (or read a TV Guide) for a week. List and describe the
various ways families are depicted. Are these realistic depictions or not? Explain.
B. Animals are People,Too! Nonhuman Family Members
1. Americans are humanizing their dogs and cats and spending ever more on their care
and comfort.
2. Some of our purchases for our pets include insurance and presents for their birthdays
and holidays, etc.
C. The Family Life Cycle
1. Many factors affect what a family spends including the number of people in the
family, their ages, and whether one, two, or more adults work outside the home.
2. Two especially important factors that determine how a couple spends time and money
are 1) whether they have children and 2) whether the woman works.
3. Marketers apply the family life cycle (FLC) concept to segment households.
a. The FLC combines trends in income and family composition with the changes
these demands place on income.
b. As we age, our preferences and needs tend to change.
c. Four variables are useful for describing these changes.
i. Age
ii. Marital status
iii. Presence or absence of kids in the home
iv. Ages of children, if present
IV. The Intimate Corporation: Family Decision Making
A. Family Decisions
1. The decision process within a household resembles a business conference.
Discussion Opportunity—Provide an illustration from your family where consensual purchase
decisions and accommodative purchase decisions occurred. Which form is the most normal?
Explain.
2. Although there is consensus when analysts describe age cohorts, the labels and cutoff
dates they use to place consumers into generational categories can vary. One rough
approximation looks like this:
a. The Interbellum Generation—People born at the beginning of the twentieth
century.
b. The Silent Generation—People born between the two World Wars
c. The War Baby Generation—People born during World War II
d. The Baby Boom Generation—People born between 1946–1964
e. Generation X—People born between 1965–1985
f. Generation Y—People born between 1986–2002
g. Generation Z—People born 2003 and later
3. Values and symbolism used to appeal to age cohorts can evoke powerful feelings of
nostalgia.
a. Adults older than 30 are the most susceptible to nostalgia.
b. Many advertising campaigns appeal to nostalgia for groups by using music
from the nostalgic period.
c. Table 13.1 shows a scale researchers use to measure the impact of nostalgia on
individual consumers.
*****Use Table 13.1 Here;
Use Consumer Behavior Challenge Here *****
Discuss #13
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: What is nostalgic to you? Think back to earlier school years.
What products were popular? Do you still use these products (if you can find them)? What is
your all-time favorite musical group? How do marketers revive markets for nostalgic products?
Would the technique work with you?
B. The Youth Market
1. The global youth market represents $100 billion in spending power.
2. The power of word of mouth communication is most important in the youth market
segment, where 78% of 13- to 17-year-olds engaged in word of mouth about media
and entertainment brands and 67% engaged in word of mouth about technology from
2009-2010 (vs. 57% and 39% of the general public, respectively).
3. The transitions that teenagers go through create a lot of uncertainty about one’s self
and the need to belong and find one’s unique identity, as a person becomes pressing.
Teens search for cues from their peers and from advertising.
4. Product usage is a significant medium that lets them satisfy needs for belonging,
independence, experimentation, responsibility, and approval from others.
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: How would you describe teens today? Is your description positive
or negative? How does this description match the description of you during your teen years?
What can you learn from this exercise?
5. According to research done by Saatchi & Saatchi, a global advertising agency, there
are four themes common to all teens:
a. Autonomy versus belonging—want independence but need support.
b. Rebellion versus conformity—rebellion against social norms but want
acceptance.
c. Idealism versus pragmatism—must reconcile how the world should be with
reality.
d. Narcissism versus intimacy—obsessed with appearance but want sincere
relationships.
6. Ridicule is a way adolescents exchange information about consumption norms and
values.
7. There are strong cultural differences when it comes to the desirability of revolting
against the establishment.
Discussion Opportunity—After examining the common themes applied to teenagers, ask how
marketers could use this information to adjust strategy. What type of ads worked best on you
when you were a teenager? Do you look at these ads and the products they represented
differently now? Explain.
C. Gen Y
1. Generation Y kids go by various names, including Echo Boomers and Millennials.
a. They are hopeful about the future and believe it is important to maintain a positive
outlook on life.
b. They make up one-third of the U.S. population and spend $170 billion a year.
c. They reflect the changes to American life; they are diverse and many grew up in
nontraditional families.
d. Gen Yers are jugglers who place high value on being both footloose and
connected through technology, a condition known as connexity.
2. When compared to parents and older siblings, Gen Yers hold relatively traditional
values and prefer to fit in rather than rebel.
a. Their acculturation agents stress teamwork.
b. Violent crime, tobacco and alcohol use, and teen pregnancy are down.
c. They trust the government and their parents.
3. They are multitaskers.
a. They engage cell phones, music downloads, and IMs at the same time.
b. They are at home in a thumb culture that communicates online and by cell phone.
c. They use computers to express cyber identities and to transport themselves to
other places and modes of being.
4. Rules of engagement for young consumers:
a. Rule 1: Do not talk down.
b. Rule 2: Do not try to be what you are not. Stay true to your brand image.
c. Rule 3: Entertain them. Make it interactive and keep the sell short.
d. Rule 4: Show that you know what they are going through, but keep it light.
e. Rule 5: Show that you are authentic and that you give back.
5. Tweens are the 27 million children aged 8 to 14 who spend $14 billion a year on
clothes, CDs, movies and other feel-good products.
6. Advertisers spend approximately $100 million on campuses to woo college students.
a. College students spend $11 billion on snacks and beverages, $4 billion on
personal care products and $3 billion on CDs and tapes each year.
b. College students are willing to try new products; they do not have brand loyalty in
some product categories.
c. College students are difficult to reach via conventional media like newspapers; the
Internet is an effective way to reach them and they watch an average of 24.3 hours
of television a week.
*****Use Consumer Behavior Challenges Here *****
Discuss #14 and #15
Apply #6
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: What do you think are three of the greatest problems facing a
typical teenager (high school student) today? Can you suggest anything that marketers can do to
help a teenager during this growing-up period? What would you do differently during your
teenage years if you had a “do over”?
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: Can you think of ways you influenced your parents’ buying
decisions when you were a teenager? What was your “track record”?
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: If you were hired to sell a new type of product directly to college
students, what do you think would be the best way to reach them? What would your plan
include?
Discussion Opportunity—Provide the following scenario to the class: Let us say that you were
going to design a set that would show a typical dorm room for a college student attending a
college or university today. This dorm room would provide the setting in which you would shoot
a commercial to sell some product to the student. What would the room look like? What would be
in it? What would be on the walls? How would this room be different from 10 or 20 years ago?
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: Remember the last time you went on Spring Break? How did
marketers attempt to reach you and your fellow students? Evaluate the effectiveness of these
techniques.
7. How do we research the youth market?
a. We use unusual techniques because teens do not respond well to typical
survey methods.
b. We try to understand what cool means to teens by meeting with cool kids,
taking them to dinner, and using the Web.
D. Gen X
1. The cohort of 46 million Americans who will be a powerful force through the end of
this decade and beyond.
2. This generation has been labeled “Generation X,” “slackers,” or “baby busters.”
Discussion Opportunity—Regardless of whether you are in “Generation X” or not, what are
your impressions of this cohort? Do you think it is misunderstood? What problems and
opportunities will this generation face? If you were given the task of appealing to this
generation, what approach or theme would you use? Why?
E. The Mature Market (Baby Boomers)
1. The Baby Boomer age cohort is the source of many fundamental cultural and
economic changes. The reason: power in numbers.
2. They account for a large percentage of consumer spending in many categories and
constitute a third of media users.
*****Use Consumer Behavior Challenge Here *****
Discuss #18
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: If you were to characterize the baby boomers, how would you
describe them? What do you think would “turn them on”? What do you admire about them?
What do you dislike about them?
Discussion Opportunity—Why did Woodstock have such an impact on this generation? How
does this impact affect purchasing habits?
F. The Gray Market
1. People older than 60 are the fastest growing age group on earth.
2. Older adults control more than 50% of discretionary income and worldwide
consumers over 50 spend nearly $400 billion a year.
3. Householders aged 55 to 64 spend 15% more than average per capita, and spend
increasing amounts on exercise facilities, cruises and tourism, cosmetic surgery and
skin treatments, and “how-to” books and university courses.
*****Use Consumer Behavior Challenge Here *****
Discuss #20
Discussion Opportunity—List three university courses that you think might be interesting to
seniors. Have the class suggest their own choices. Discuss these choices.
4. A person’s perceived age, or how old the person feels, is a better predictor of
behavior than chronological age; mental outlook and activity level have a lot more to
do with longevity and quality of life than actual age.
5. For marketing to older people to succeed, they should link to one or more factors:
a. Autonomy—they want to lead active lives and to be self-sufficient.
b. Connectedness—they want to keep bonds with friends and family.
c. Altruism—they want to give something back to the world.
Discussion Opportunity—Ask: What do you think are the key values of the elderly? How could
these be incorporated into advertising to stimulate their interest in products?
V. Place-Based Subcultures
A. Geodemography refers to analytical techniques that combine data on consumer
expenditures and other socioeconomic factors that geographic information about the areas
in which people live, in order to identify consumers share common consumption patterns.
B. Marketers use clustering techniques like Nielsen’s PRIZM system to classify locations
into meaningful categories.
End-of-Chapter Support Material
SUMMARY OF SPECIAL FEATURE BOXES
1. The Tangled Web
The release of several popular video games including Grand Theft Auto illustrates the
concerns of some critics who argue that the games play on racial stereotypes.
2. Net Profit
At least in part because of the youthfulness of the Hispanic market, Hispanic Americans
spend much more time online than non-Hispanics.
3. CB As I See It: Jerome D. Williams, Rutgers University
Multicultural consumer segments are of increasing importance to marketers as the
combined buying power of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians
exceeds $2 trillion. However, there is continuing inequality in the U.S. marketplace in
terms of how these groups are treated.
4. Marketing Opportunity
The pet industry has more than $40 billion in annual revenue, more than either the toy or
candy industry. Almost one-third of all U.S. households have at least one pet.
5. Marketing Pitfall
Marketers push the limited when marketing to tweens. The average age at which women
begin to use beauty products is 13, and one study found that 6 to 9 year olds use lipstick
or lip gloss.
6. Marketing Pitfall
Hookah pens have become a popular alternative to e-cigarettes, even though they are
chemically identical. It is expected that sales of these products will pass those of
conventional cigarettes.
