Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty‐somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail

Citation

Yarrow, K. and O'Donnell, J. (2010), "Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty‐somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 564-565. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761011078316

Gen BuY offers a descriptive account of how Generation Y consumers are changing retail based on research study statistics, interviews with experts, interviews with Millennials, case studies, and more. The book is structured more like an outline and less like a novel. There is no underlying personal or company narrative that the reader can follow through the book, so all of the statistics, studies, and interviews can become tedious to plow through. However, after reading Gen Buy, the reader will definitely walk away learning about new websites, ideas, and consumer behaviors that relate to the modern retail environment.

The introduction of Gen BuY argues that it is important to understand young consumers and their changing shopping expectations and habits. The Introduction provides a list of the seven research sources that the book is based on and then outlines the eight chapters of the book:

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  Chapter 1 describes the social and cultural background of Gen Y.

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  Chapter 2 identifies the unique shopping and buying behaviors of Gen Y.

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  Chapter 3 delves into the psychological motives of Gen Y.

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  Chapter 4 examines needs and wants, shopping styles, and effective ways to communicate with Gen Y.

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  Chapter 5 contrasts the shopping habits of young men and women and discusses dating.

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  Chapter 6 discusses how retailers have changed their in‐store and online marketing due to the spending power of Gen Y.

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  Chapter 7 presents examples of how retailers have successfully marketed to Gen Y.

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  Chapter 8 contains additional interviews and commentary from industry experts.

The book does present a lot of information on young consumers and modern retailers that marketing managers, educators, and students might not be aware of. For example, Gen BuY states that “adoring parents” and “their digital world” are the two most influential factors on Gen Y (pp. 6‐7). The book states that communicating to young consumers through social media sites like Allykatzz.com and Facebook applications like “what when WEAR” (p. 25) is important. “Social retailing” (p. 38) is described as the process of retail customers sharing dressing room video streams to their friends’ computers and mobile devices. Furthermore, some websites mentioned in Gen BuY that I had never heard of include RadicalParenting.com, CollegeABC.com, Peoplesdirt.com, YPulse.com, IBeatYou.com, HotorNot.com, Karmaloop.com, Threadless.com, Fabilicious.com, RockYou.com, and Google Zeitgeist.

The analysis of young shoppers outlined in chapter 3 contains several findings that might leave Gen Y parents a little uneasy. Research shows that Gen Y consumers view shopping as a “mental vacation” (p. 53), “calms anxiety” (p. 57), “helps them to feel more secure” (p. 57), and can “improve life in some way” (p. 62). Chapter 3 goes on to state that “parents are essential in teaching kids the more rational, less social and emotional components of purchasing decisions” (p. 67) and that “credit cards create a detachment from money that often makes spending precious funds seem less relevant than the gratification of buying something tangible. That, coupled with the speedy, often impulsive nature of this generation, can cause problems” (p. 72). Both parents and marketers need to be concerned about their young consumers because as young consumers become older consumers, “focus group participants ‘loved’ shopping a bit less” (p. 101).

Gen BuY identifies many technological retail innovations such as Anthropologie's Flickr integration, Gap's Jingle Bells song remix capabilities, online tutorials, community forums, and virtual worlds like Sears’ Zwinktopia. The innovative video promotion on YouTube called “Extreme Sheep” (p. 188) by Samsung was fun to watch. It would have been interesting to learn more about the marketing efforts involved in the idea generation, management, planning, and execution associated with “investing millions of dollars in their [company] websites” (p. 170).

Gen BuY offers readers good insight into the minds and lives of Gen Y consumers, and the book offers a good review of how retailers are marketing to Gen Y in new ways. But, because Gen BuY presents so much information it is difficult to become engaged with the life of a single Gen Y consumer or the marketing efforts of a single retailer.

David Mark HorowitzSonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, USA