Monday, March 23, 2009

Gen X not worth studying?

A friend pointed me at this blog entry, where the author is citing statistics from a recent study done by Accenture on consumer electronics usage. Responses are broken down by generation and focused, evidently, on the only two that matter—Baby Boomers and Generation Y.

I couldn't find the actual study online, but the news story in the consumer electronics trade press the blog author points to seems to confirm that the study grouped respondants into only two generational categories—Boomers if the respondant was 45 or older, and Generation Y if 44 or younger.

Now, I know the start and stop years associated with each generation can vary a little depending on your source, but has anyone ever seen such an oversimplification? And what does it say about Accenture's expectations for variation of usage (and spending habits) among age groups that they believe these are the only categories worth looking at?

A story about a more segmented study on the same subject can be found here.

3 comments:

Maddie Grant said...

Sigh. That is ridiculous.

Charles Hartley said...

Eric,

We were clear in our published report that Generation Y consisted of 18 to 24 year olds and Baby Boomers were 45 years old and above. We also understand that Gen X is in the 25 to 44 year old range. We did not compare boomers to consumers in the 18 to 44 age range but rather consumers in the 18 to 24 range. We did not focus on Gen X because such comparisons with the boomers and Gen Y were not as striking. We were interested in the more extreme differences in usage found between the boomers and Gen Y.

Charlie Hartley
Accenture

Eric Lanke said...

Thanks for the clarification, Charlie. I tried, but couldn't find the full report on the Internet, just the press and blog coverage I described in my post—which seems to have blurred a line Accenture attempted to keep clear. Can you provide us with a link to the full report?

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