Every marketer knows parents' purchase decisions in everything from breakfast cereal to cell phones are often strongly influenced by their children. Wise marketers have leveraged this by marketing directly to their kids, even though they are not the ultimate decision-maker. With close relationships between hovering parents and young adults increasingly the norm, the opposite strategy may start to make sense: influence young adults' decisions through their parents.
Colleges have long known the importance of parents to the application and decision process. Now HR managers are also directly addressing parental concerns after noticing parents were helping their adult children negotiate pay and benefits, angle for promotions and evaluate job offers. According to BNet, Office Depot is planning to include a reassuring message to parents on its web site; Merrill started sponsoring a Parents’ Day in 2006. The company flies parents and caretakers of diversity students to Manhattan, teaches them about the business, provides a tour of the Big Apple, and emphasizes company support and benefits, such as free meals and transportation for employees working overtime. The program has been so successful they are considering expanding it. Last year only one student whose parents attended the event didn’t accept the firm’s subsequent job offer.
Millennials are just beginning to make their first significant adult purchases -- automobiles and appliances, student loans, health and life insurance, a home, financial investments, and automobiles. As they make these decisions for the first time, they will turn to their parents for advice. Smart marketers will anticipate the influence parents are likely to have in these decisions. After all, 50% of 18-24 year old men and 33% of women still live at home, and many continue to receive financial support from their parents. Increasingly, consumer decisions may look more like corporate 'buying center' decisions, with multiple influencers and lack of clarity around who is the true decision-maker.
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i do a lot of reading on american generations. i focus mainly in millennials because that's the generation i'm part of. my husband is a very late gen-xer (he's turning 30 in a couple weeks, so maybe even a millennial?) the other day we were talking about helicopter parents, and said we thought genY (millennials) would actually be the opposite. i partly believe that because they are a civic generation, like the GIs, who had a more lax parenting style with the Boomers, than their preceding generation had with the Silent generation.
ReplyDeleteThe Boomers (my parent's generation) were known for their strong sense of conscience, and were therefor pretty judgmental and presumptuous. In some ways I think Boomers have left their GenY kids a little paralyzed. GenY is so overwhelmed by parents who are constantly 'advising' them, that it makes it hard for them to confidently make their own decisions.
GenY likes to keep things simple, and are more hopeful than Boomers or GenX. For that reason I think we'll have more trust in our kids to make their own decisions, saying farewell to the helicopter parenting. I think GenY will want their kids to be confident in their own decision-making, similar to GIs who raised their kids to be independently-minded. Much to their chagrin, they succeeded, helping form the Boom generation.