Identifying Millennials' key influencers from early childhood: insights into current consumer preferences

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodological approach to understanding key influencers of Millennials and other generational cohorts. The approach identifies adults' implicit consumer preferences based on their early childhood cultural experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws from research in the area of generational studies, implicit psychological processing, and consumer preferences to propose a method of identifying and confirming key influencers of generational cohorts' implicit preferences.

Findings

A more complete understanding of Millennials and other generational cohorts can be gleaned by complementing current methodological approaches with the one proposed in this paper.

Research limitations/implications

As preliminary research has just begun using this model, additional research is needed to confirm the theoretical work and association between early childhood influencers and actual purchasing behaviors.

Practical implications

The identification of early childhood influencers can be used by businesses for their current marketing strategies with Millennials and other generational cohorts or for product development/updates in anticipation of cohorts “aging into” target markets.

Originality/value

The approach proposed in this paper is innovative in its integration of generational cohort analysis with empirical approaches to measuring implicit consumer preferences.

Citation

Young, A.M. and Hinesly, M.D. (2012), "Identifying Millennials' key influencers from early childhood: insights into current consumer preferences", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 146-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363761211206393