Today’s Young Affluents Are The “Want-It-All” Generation
For the past decade, global luxury marketers have enjoyed strong sales and profitability resulting from the rising affluence of Baby Boomers. Aptly called the “Me-Generation,” Baby Boomers felt entitled to indulge their consumer passion for luxuries in a way that buoyed their lifestyles and the luxury companies and brands they depended on.
But today, the oldest Baby Boomers are approaching retirement and the generation’s way of expressing its Me-Generation attitude will be to turn away from luxury consumerism toward having new life experiences in the senior years.
Taking over as the core target market for luxury marketers in the years ahead will be the Young Affluents aged 40 years and younger, roughly corresponding to the Generation X and Millennial generations. This is good news for luxury marketers, as the Young Affluents are even more passionate luxury consumers than the Baby Boomers were, according to a new study from Unity Marketing called the Generations of Luxury. In 2006, the 40-and-under Young Affluents spent 32 percent more on luxuries than those over 40, an average of $65,294 as compared to $49,485. Incomes for both age groups were nearly identical, according to Unity Marketing.
Young Affluents will play an increasing important role in the target market for global luxury marketers over the next 10-20 years, not just in the United States (with a median age 36.5 years) or in the European countries (where the median age is around 40 years old), but in the developing luxury markets, like Brazil (median age 28.2 years), India (24.9 years) and China (32.7 years), where the population as a whole is more youthful, said Unity.
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