Generational research and advertising to various age cohorts

in a previous editorial, i called for more research on advertising to younger consumers, with a special focus on Millennials, given that group’s growing size and influence (taylor 2018). While advertising to young consumers, including Generation Z as well as Millennials remains of interest to the International Journal of Advertising, a recent conversation i had with Jeff Weiss, Chief Executive officer of age of Majority, a market research and consulting firm specializing in marketing to older consumers has reminded me that all generational segments are in need of more research and that it appears that older consumers are actually a very under-studied group – often misunderstood by practitioners and definitely under-represented in academic research (taylor 2021). age of Majority’s research has found that, contrary to popular belief, threequarters of consumers who are 55 years and older are “active agers” who are mentally, socially, and digitally active. While they may deal with challenges in one or more of these areas, the active ager strives to deal with them to get the most out of life. age of Majority’s research also goes against conventional wisdom in suggesting that older consumers are more open to trying new product than has been believed, are more technologically savvy than given credit for, and can be successfully targeted without alienating consumers. as these active older consumers number about 75 million, counting members of both Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation, in the U.S. alone, and control about of wealth and 40% of consumer spending, it is highly worthwhile to understand them. Moreover, going forward as all groups will age, it is important to understand age group patterns in order to anticipate what trends will hold as Generation X, Millennials, and other groups age themselves. i wish that i could say that my call for more research on Millennials and generational research in general in my 2018 editorial may have helped propel substantially more work on the topic. However, in looking at recent issues of advertising and marketing journals, this does not appear to be the case. this is not to say that there have not been some quality studies on the topic (see, e.g., tanyel, Stuart and Griffin; Chang and tung 2016; Knoll et al. 2017; Southgate 2017), but it still appears that students writing reports on marketing to generational groups are going to find substantially more material in the popular press or from research firms (see, e.g., Nielsen 2017). it is notable that we continue to see many good studies focused on marketing to children (e.g., alhabash et al. 2021), but these studies generally and understandably focus on the vulnerability of consumers under 18 in a mostly timeless manner. i have to acknowledge that it is easier to call for more generational research than it is to actually do it. one issue is that there is no one accepted definition of all currently existing generations along with associated data cut-offs. While this