The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

by Kenneth W. Gronbach
Released July 2008
Publisher(s): AMACOM
ISBN: 9780814401811

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Book description

For years, marketers have held on to unwavering beliefs that have dictated how they market to their consumers. But the hard truth is that the changes we see in marketing and business are based on one undeniable factor--the size of the generations we are selling to. As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they buy will change. Each product and service has a "best customer" that sustains a business. As these customers grow up, the smartest marketers will stay ahead of them--and their money. In The Age Curve, marketing guru Kenneth Gronbach shows executives and entrepreneurs how to anticipate this wave of predictable demand and ride it to success. Using impeccable research, Gronbach reveals how our largest generations, the Baby Boomers and Generation Y, are redefining how we market and how businesses can anticipate their needs more effectively. Complete with entertaining examples of companies like Apple who have perfected their strategies for building a loyal customer base, as well as those who haven't (Levi Strauss and Honda Motorcycle), this book will show readers: how to determine their best customers * how successful companies are earning the loyalty of Generation Y and cultivating allegiance to their products for years to come * why Generation X is a much less valuable market than any of us have been led to believe * and much more Both shocking and compelling, The Age Curve will change the way companies look at their customers and how they market to them.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Foreword
  3. Introduction
  4. The Parade of Generations: Why Aren’t Marketers Paying Attention?
    1. The Generational Impact on Supply and Demand
      1. The Generational Parade
      2. Discovering a Generation’s Personality
    2. Who Are These People?
      1. The GI Generation
      2. The Silent Generation
      3. The Baby Boom Generation
      4. Generation X
      5. Generation Y
    3. Bell Curves, Pies, and Your “Best Customer”
      1. Finding the Automotive Sweet Spot
      2. Cell Phones: The Market That Keeps Expanding!
    4. Case Study: Detroit, Japan, and the Best Customers for Cars
      1. Oil and the Generations
      2. An Idea from Porsche
  5. The Older Generations
    1. Silent Virtues: A Small Group with Its Own Impact
      1. The Truth About Silents
      2. The Challenge of Marketing to Silents
    2. Case Study: How the “Graying Of America” Myth Will Take Down the Assisted-Living Industry
      1. The Myth of the Graying of America
      2. The Impending Death of Assisted Living
  6. The Baby Boomers: The Radical-Change Generation and Its Impact on Today and Tomorrow
    1. The Boomers: Mass, Money, and Motivation
      1. One, Two, Three . . . A Million, A Billion, A Trillion
      2. Follow the Money: A Transfer of Wealth and Power
    2. What Boomers Will Buy
    3. Boomers Will Not Get Old
      1. Boomers Will Not “Give In”
      2. Cashing in on the Boomer Consumers
    4. The Boomer Economy: Of Credit Cards and Gift Cards
      1. The Insanity of Credit Card Spending
      2. The Insanity of Gift Cards
    5. Of Course You Can Afford It!
      1. Boomers and Car Loans
      2. The Housing Bubble Bursts
    6. Social Security and Private Health Care: Dead But Not Buried
      1. Social Security Is a Ponzi Scheme
      2. Socialized Medicine—a Boomer Mandate
    7. Wal-Mart Hits a Wall—A Great Wall
    8. Media’s Slow Death: The End of Marketing As We Know It
  7. Generation X: The Outsize Expectations of a Small Generation
    1. Quit Picking on the Xers!
      1. Generation X’s Bad Rap
      2. The Truth About Generation X
    2. The Cause and Effect of a Small Generation
      1. The Stages of Our Lives
      2. Generation X and Taxes
      3. The Effect of Legalized Abortion on Generation X
    3. The X Factor: Where Have All the Workers Gone?
      1. Does Anyone Speak English?
      2. Generation X and the Skilled Labor Force
      3. Where Are All the Truck Drivers?
      4. Where Have All the Managers Gone?
      5. Boomers to the Rescue?
    4. The Gen X Labor Shortage and the Impact on Direct Mail
    5. Case Study: How Generation X Drove Motorcycle Sales off the Cliff
      1. What Happened?
      2. A Lesson in Retail Math
      3. Fast Forward to Today
    6. Case Study: Planes Stuck on the Ground—A Business Traveler’s Tale
      1. About Business Travel
      2. Generation Y to the Rescue
    7. Case Study: The Death of a Discount Store
  8. Generation Y: The Giant on the Horizon
    1. Stop Looking in the Rearview Mirror!
      1. A Future You Can Taste
      2. Clothing the Future
      3. It’s Early to Bed for the Boomers
      4. The Future of Other Retail
      5. Avoiding Disaster
    2. The Great Y Ahead: More of Everything
    3. Marketing to Generation Y
      1. Direct Mail’s Magic 2 Percent
      2. Snail Mail, Billboards, and the Internet
      3. Hello Pepsi, Goodbye Coke: The End of the Cola War
    4. Case Study: No Leg to Stand On—A Levi’s Footnote
      1. My Free Lesson in Changing Demographics
      2. Generation Y Will Lead the Fashion Parade
    5. Schools, Taxes, and the Future
      1. The Generational Battle over Taxes Is Correcting Itself
      2. To Build or Not To Build
    6. Generation Y’s Leading Legacy
      1. The Generation Y Society
      2. The 600-Pound Green Gorilla
  9. The Generation Impact of Social Issues
    1. The Bigotry Is Almost Gone—A Boomer’s Perspective
      1. How Much Things Have Changed
    2. Coming to America: Melting Into the World’s Melting Pot
      1. The Latino Market
      2. The Anti-Immigration Debate
    3. Macro and Micro Conclusions
  10. The Older Generations
    1. Fast Facts About the GI Generation
    2. Fast Facts about the Silent Generation
  11. The Baby Boomers
    1. Fast Facts about the Baby Boomers
  12. Generation X
    1. Fast Facts about Generation X
  13. Generation Y
    1. Fast Facts about Generation Y
  14. About the Author
  15. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm
  • Author(s): Kenneth W. Gronbach
  • Release date: July 2008
  • Publisher(s): AMACOM
  • ISBN: 9780814401811