Consumer Behaviour of Two People from Different Generations

Imagine going to a local supermarket. In a way, it’s a unique place where you can come across various scenes from people’s daily life. You can see a group of children choosing snacks after a long school day; a tired mum with big bags full of healthy food for the whole family; a busy dad quickly grabbing the items on the shopping list; an old lady grumping about a new rise in prices; a fit girl looking for some fresh fruit and vegetables for her balanced diet, and so on. You might ask if all these people have anything in common. They are all consumers, but they all behave in a different way while choosing the things they would like to buy. What is the difference in their consumer behaviour? Let us briefly review the following matter choosing the representatives of two generations as examples.

To begin with, if we take a closer look at millennials and their consumer behaviour, we might find that they tend to pay less attention to such things, as the quality of food, expiry date, product contents etc. As a rule, teens don’t have much money, and they like spending it on something cheap and yummy – something you can eat or drink in a big company or share with friends, such as a packet of crisps, a bottle of Cola or a bar of chocolate. They don’t need to buy much, as everything necessary is usually provided by their parents. So, they are typically easily distracted by the product design or popularity of a particular item among their peers. If someone they consider to be cool has this product, they might want to buy it. Thus, product placement, for instance, a famous blogger advertising, wearing or eating a product, is one of the most successful tools of manipulating kids into buying things.

To continue, let us take a representative of the baby boomers’ generation – it might be someone’s grandma or granddad. Senior citizens often have a lot of health problems; as a result, they pay much more attention to what they buy. The quality of food is more important to them than its design or popularity with certain social groups. Moreover, it takes them more time to choose the right product, as they want to avoid buying an expired, low-quality or otherwise unsuitable product. Price is another factor that older people take into consideration. If there is a wide range of products in the same price tier, they will usually study carefully all the products and choose the best quality-price ratio.

Making a conclusion, we can underline the idea that consumer behaviour depends much on a person’s identity and its particular factors, such as age or their belonging to a specific generation, as well as social group. If younger people prefer choosing things popular among their friends and their favourite celebs, older people rely much on their own taste preferences, their income and product qualities.