Generation Y: The Builders of Tomorrow’s Business

Generation Y: The Builders of Tomorrow’s Business

Introduction

There have been a number of articles in the media about the impact that Generation Y is likely to have. They suggest that Generation Y is distinctly different from generations that have come before as it is shaped by tools like the mobile and the internet.

The changes in how businesses and consumers interact go beyond generational shifts. Therefore, critics have argued that the concept of the generational cohort lacks rigor. They suggest that it conceals more than it explains about consumer behavior and
generational shifts. Banks and financial institutions will have to wrestle with these issues as they seek to reinforce and reinvigorate their brands.

The sociologist Karl Manheim first defined generational cohorts in 1928, in a paper titled “On the problem of generations”. He outlined his analysis of how a generational experience shaped people across class and geographical lines. To Mannheim
generations were sources of opposition, challenging existing societal norms and values and bringing social change through collective generational organization.

Mannheim, writing at a time when social analysis was dominated by Marxist emphasis on class, argued that age groups had the ability to act as agents of social change and become carriers of intellectual and organizational alternatives to the status quo.

The main criticism of the concept of cohorts is that people’s attitudes and beliefs tend to change gradually and are not associated with a single cohort. People pass through different stages of life such as - being educated, entering the job market, getting married. As a result, people’s attitudes and beliefs are shaped by these challenges rather than the generational cohort they belong to.

Another argument is that the boundaries of a generation are often arbitrary – there is for instance little agreement on the dates that bind a generation. Wikipedia for instance defines Generation Y as “a generation, defined not by formal process but rather by demographers, the media, popular culture, market researchers and members of the generation itself, there is no precise consensus as to which birth years constitute this generation.”

The argument for framing Generation Y as a category of consumers is that it defines a group of people who share a common experience. With the spread of mobile phones and

computers young people around the world are able to forge a national and at times even a global identity. In that sense, the concept of Generation Y serves a serious challenge to brand owners who seek to define the boundaries of their offerings and how they communicate with their consumers.

Metaphor is a powerful tool for framing information and Generation Y can be likened to “natives” in a world dominated by digital technologies – a digital world. In fact, John Palfrey and Uri Gasse have written a book “Born Digital Understanding the first
generation of Digital Natives.” Then those who were born before the advent of these technologies could be termed as “digital immigrants.” They argue that there are three distinct characteristics of digital natives - they were all born after 1980, when social digital technologies, such as Usenet and bulletin board systems became widely used; they all have access to networked digital technologies and they have the skills to use these technologies.

Download

Download full paper At
http://www.enjineer.com/forum