Comparing older and younger Generation Yers\' perception toward advertising.

1. Talking ‘Bout My Generation: Comparing Older & Younger Gen Yers’ Perception Toward Advertising Sheila Rahel Courtney Jones Jennifer Azzolino

3. The younger population of Gen Yers, those under the age of 29, have a more positive attitude toward advertising than those 29 years of age and older. For this reason, managers should focus on this target group when designing and implementing advertising objectives.

4. It is important to maintain these positive outlooks in order to hold the attention of these consumers, and gain their loyalty. 2

6. Understand general attitudes and beliefs of Generation Y consumers toward advertising

7. Identify if a relationship exists between age and income comparative to attitudes of Gen Yers about advertising

8. Design

9. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 recipients

10. Input data for analysis using SPSS

11. Content

12. Non-students and working Gen Yers, born between 1978 and 1998, responded at a rate of 53% which is a total of 266 returned

13. The Gen Yers were categorized into two age groups:

14. 28 and younger

15. 29 and older 3

16. Target Gen Yer Nate is 29 years old. He lives in Downtown San Francisco with his girlfriend of four years. He is a student at San Francisco State, and enjoys surfing the internet in his spare time. He recently purchased an iPad, and was the first of his friends to own one. He works part-time at Starbucks near the San Francisco Centre. When he has a free afternoon, he searches the mall for the latest trends. One of his favorite stores is Nordstrom, where he looks for a trendy tie that he saw earlier that day while watching Glee. 4

17. Key Findings Generation Y consumers under the age of 29 tend to have a more favorable outlook on advertising. The analysis shows that the specified respondents seem to agree that advertising is more effective when the beliefs are positive. Among the two age groups, the older Gen Yers disagreed with the younger Gen Yers when it came to advertising playing a role in convincing consumers to buy unnecessary goods Compared to older Gen Yers, the younger age group further acknowledges that advertising increases the standards of living Although a majority of younger Gen Yers favor the belief that advertising results in better products, there is a slight shift towards a neutral view The younger age group are more likely to say that most product advertising is accurate and truthful The belief that advertising is a factor in producing a larger volume of goods is fairly neutral between both groups, however, the younger Gen Yers believe that the volume of goods produced increases with advertising Younger Gen Yers tend to consider the standards of advertising to be more extreme today in contrast to 10 years ago. 5

18. Key Findings (Continued) There is no significant difference between Gen Yers that make less than $40,000 and those that make more than $40,000 in relation to their attitudes toward advertising. The attitudes were similar across all values of income, therefore income is not a significant factor. 6

19. “Since Gen Yers are coming of age during the most consistently expansive economy in the last 30 years, of course they have a more positive, optimistic outlook on life, work, and the future than Xers did at their age.” “You can count on it: Gen Yers will be curious not only about your culture, mission and goals; products, services and customers; compensation and benefits, but about the technology you use to support them.” 7

21. Advertisements should be direct and straightforward with few extras that could potentially distract from the main focus of the ad

22. Main focus of the advertisement should be placed on how the product will not only benefit the consumer but the general public as a whole

23. According to Business Week the younger Gen Yers “will continue to grow every single year for the next ten years”, and since they have more positive perceptions about advertising, this group should be the main focus

24. The standard of advertising has continuously increased; therefore, managers must be creative and innovative in their advertising designs in order to grasp the attention of Gen Yers8

25. Appendix 1A 9

26. Appendix 1B 10

27. Appendix 2 11

28. Appendix 3 12

29. Appendix 4 13