Generationally determined social values and shared formative experiences, as much as or more than other demographic or economic factors, provide a strategic framework through which you can understand and approach your marketplace. Further, when coordinated with traditional marketing techniques — including target marketing, which is discussed later in this unit — thinking
generationally can improve your performance profitably.
The primary advocate of "Generational Marketing", Yankelovich Partners, a leading consumer research organization, published the definitive, Rocking the Ages - The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing, in 1997. This study confirmed the validity of our long-standing interest in these topics and pointed the way for later exploration.
In essence, the mission of the financial services business is helping people — individually or through their businesses — achieve the "good life." That is,
lifetime personal financial security, the pursuit of which is a core value that transcends generations. While each of us has his or her own definition of the "good life" (after all, that's what fact-finding forms are for, and why they're blank), different "generational cohorts" approach personal financial security in their own unique ways — much as different religions follow different paths to spiritual fulfillment.
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