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Generations has been a concept long before marketing. I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends, but the concept is pretty clear:

Generations has been a concept long before marketing. I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends, but the concept is pretty clear: you are one generation, your children another, your parents another, your grandparents another. Hence the base word "generate".

roymurdock 8y ago
Market research agencies draw the line nowadays and their terms get picked up in general lingo Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy
- hnaccy 8y ago
  Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z don't seem to have been coined by market research agencies.
  - yourapostasy 8y ago
    They rarely coin words into mainstream lingo. But they are uniquely positioned with their data streams to detect trends as they are happening. And they will happily co-opt a term and promote it, if the term makes it easier for consumers to self-identify as part of a group. That eliminates the marketing effort to convince a consumer that they are part of a particular group. Getting individuals to self-identify themselves as members of various groups is a highly effective advertising delivery channel. Convincing you to use groupings as a convenient, time-saving shorthand (like branding is a convenient shortcut) gets you to buy more, more frequently. Marketers and advertisers fear you insisting upon evaluating situations and people one-on-one, as they come up in your life, and using the marinating and revealing effects of time to judge value and character.
- asdff 8y ago
  >Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy And they still do...
wool_gather 8y ago
> I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends It's not really fixed as far as I can tell. Around the actual turn of the millennium, millennials were said to start in 1980. Now it's more commonly pegged at 1982.

roymurdock 8y ago

Market research agencies draw the line nowadays and their terms get picked up in general lingo Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy

hnaccy 8y ago
Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z don't seem to have been coined by market research agencies.
- yourapostasy 8y ago
  They rarely coin words into mainstream lingo. But they are uniquely positioned with their data streams to detect trends as they are happening. And they will happily co-opt a term and promote it, if the term makes it easier for consumers to self-identify as part of a group. That eliminates the marketing effort to convince a consumer that they are part of a particular group. Getting individuals to self-identify themselves as members of various groups is a highly effective advertising delivery channel. Convincing you to use groupings as a convenient, time-saving shorthand (like branding is a convenient shortcut) gets you to buy more, more frequently. Marketers and advertisers fear you insisting upon evaluating situations and people one-on-one, as they come up in your life, and using the marinating and revealing effects of time to judge value and character.
asdff 8y ago
>Philosophers, novelists, sociologists, anthropologists, and economists used to define, study, and critique generational divides before advertising became such a pervasive part of the modern economy And they still do...

wool_gather 8y ago

> I do wonder about who draws the line for where a generation begins/ends It's not really fixed as far as I can tell. Around the actual turn of the millennium, millennials were said to start in 1980. Now it's more commonly pegged at 1982.