Boom: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer—the Baby Boomer Woman

Chapter . Introduction: She’s the Emerging Power Consumer

We listened intently as the marketing research director of the major cruise line described his demographic focus to us for the coming year. “We recognized that 80 percent of the time, it’s the woman who is making the major travel decisions for the family. As a result, we’ve decided to target women age 40 and under.”

“Targeting women is a smart move,” we said. “Women are going to control two-thirds of the consumer wealth in the United States over the coming decade. But is there any particular reason why you are targeting the age segment of the population that will see a 0 percent increase over the next few years while during the same period of time, the number of people age 45 to 64 will ...