Many of us have our BlackBerry or iPhones, our Netbooks, our Ultraportables and iPads, as well as a desktops computers. We’re all abuzz about CR Codes and Social Networking; however, we should remember as business people that not all consumers are computing equally. Granted Face Book and Twitter, Blogging, and Yelp may all be second nature to many Gen X, Gen Y and certainly the Millennials, but many assumptions, often misplaced, have been made about the Boomers and the Greatest Generation.
Considering that computers were invented during in the mid period of the 1900’s, and Dr. Grace Hopper invented the Cobol programming language (1959-1962), technological advances and applications were no stranger to this generation, although widespread application use was mainly limited to businesses until the mid 1980’s, when the Personal Computer first made its appearance.
One of the largest demographic generational groups has been referred to as the Baby Boomers. To make looking at the Boomer Generation meaningful, one must recognize that Boomers are not one monolithic group, but at least two groups with segments and sub segment target markets. Defining it as one group with such a range of time cohort socialization experiences does not adequately capture the psychographics. Jonathan Pontell, a social and cultural commentator, had identified the Boomer Group to be comprised of:
Boomer, born post war to 1953
Generation Jones, born between 1954- 1965.
So often I have heard assumptions regarding “older” people who are unfamiliar with technology. While there are plenty of Boomer and Gen Jonesers who are technologically savvy, we also need to remember that the Information Age was born from part of the Boomer group. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both Generation Jonsers. We know how President Obama’s election campaign relied heavily on Social Networking. He too, is of Generation Jones.
When we look at generational cohort groups and technology, it is more appropriate to segment these groups in terms of lifestyle and psychographics. Looking only at age cohorts is not only misleading, but fraught with errors. What does occur when it comes to thinking about the older generation and the Boomer Segment, is that often people make assumptions based on ageism. When we stereotype, we are bound to make decisions based on false assumptions.
In Cultural Marketing, we not only look at ethnic subcultures of the “Big Four” in the USA (Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans and Native Americans), but we also look at stereotypes and how they serve to not serve us. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that stereotypes about Asian Americans included the assumption that Asian Americans cannot be creative or good leaders in business. Tell that to Tony Tsieh, of Zappos, or Guy Kawasaki, or Christine Poon. Kawasaki is also a Generation Jones, that “older” generation that created the Internet, and revolutionized the way we do work and communicate using Microsoft and Apple Gen Jones products.
Speaking of the Internet, don’t forget Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners Lee, the inventor of the Internet and a Boomer segment member of Generation Jones.
Sometimes it’s not about age, but more about segmentation and lifestyle aspirations.
