Generation Z – the New Consumers’ Profile
You thought millennials were interesting and challenging consumers? Welcome to the era of the Zs. Yes, for years to come you will have to still market millennials, but like it or not – they are old news now. Generation Z is growing and forming some 25% of the world’s population, so really soon it will be their time.
Generation Z is roughly the people born between 1995 and 2015, at the moment they are between 25 and 4 years old. Even though generalizing about millions of people with a different cultural background is worthless, there are several reasons for us to think that this generation is way different from the previous ones.
Their world had never felt safe
Generation Z has never lived in the world before September 11th, their whole lives there has been terrorist attacks, wars and threats for the world economy to collapse. Also, they grew up with the conscious knowledge about global warming, the pollution and the damages that the previous generations caused to the world. These make them more compassionate, informed and concerned about the future.
They have never lived in a world without the Internet or social media
Gen Zs are the people who never had to deal with flip phones or dial-up internet. This makes them native digitals and the real technology generation, unlike the millennials who have seen the change from analogue to digital and are more like tech pioneers. Generation Z is the first for whom the extraordinary technological advances of the last 20th century are just a normal part of life. For them music has always been consumed digitally, news has always been shared through social media and maps have never been on paper. These have resulted in the way they interact with information and a really short attention span of just 8 seconds (4 less than for millennials).
They are accepting
To be tolerant and excepting has been the default position of generation Z. While millennials and the Y gens cheer the legislation of same-sex marriages in one country after another and the newly claimed rights for women in the Middles East, for the new generation is a surprise that this has been illegal just a decade ago. Social, sexual and cultural acceptance just goes without saying for them. This partly is rooted in the fact that the generation itself is very diverse – these are the people whose parents had the opportunity to travel and to meet different cultures, so they’re more likely to be mixed race and hold more than one nationality than their predecessors.
They are conscious consumers
In every aspect of their lives, Gen Zs are conscious consumers. They care about the environment, so they prefer reusable and recycled packages, they pay attention to the foot they eat and the cosmetics they use. Young people value their privacy and know how to keep it much better than the previous generations. After all, they have grown up with the knowledge about scandals with personal data and the lack of enough security measures. They realize the importance of “keeping it private” because their whole lives have been on a display and they have a keen understanding of the line between public and private in online settings.
To end this piece, we will tell you that Generation Z will be a challenge for the marketing world. In our next article, we will define some ways and tips on how to approach this new kind of consumers and how to reach their hearts. Meanwhile, you can read some tips about their ancestors – the millennials who are still the driving force of the modern economy.
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