A consumer’s family has a major impact on attitude and behaviour. The interaction between partners/spouses and the number and ages of children (if any) in the family can have a significant effect on buying behaviour.

One facet in understanding the family’s impact on consumer behaviour is identifying the decision maker for the purchase in question. In some cases, one partner/spouse is more dominant than the other, and even more so over the children. And in others a joint decision is made between partners/spouses. The store choice for food and household items may fall to one spouse/partner while purchases that involve a larger sum of money, such as a refrigerator, a joint decision is usually made. The decision on clothing purchases for teenagers may be greatly influenced by the teenagers themselves. Thus, marketers need to identify the key family decision maker for the product or service in question.

Family Lifecycle

Another aspect of understanding the impact of the family on buying behaviour is the family lifecycle (“FLC”). Most families pass through an orderly sequence of stages. These stages can be defined by a combination of factors such as age, marital status, and parenthood.

You have probably noticed that the things you buy have changed as you age. Think about what you wanted and how you spent five dollars when you were a child, a teenager, and an adult. When you were a child, the last thing you probably wanted as a gift was clothing. As you became a teen, however, cool clothes probably became a bigger priority. Don’t look now, but depending on the stage of life you’re currently in, diapers and wrinkle cream might be just around the corner.

If you’re single and working after graduation, you probably spend your money differently than a newly married couple. How do you think spending patterns change when someone has a young child or a teenager or a child in college? Diapers and day care, orthodontia, tuition, electronics—regardless of the age, children affect the spending patterns of families. Once children graduate from college and parents are empty nesters, spending patterns change again.

Empty-nesters and baby boomers are a huge market that companies are trying to tap. Ford and other car companies have created “aging suits” for young employees to wear when they’re designing automobiles. The suit simulates the restricted mobility and vision people experience as they get older. Car designers can then figure out how to configure the automobiles to better meet the needs of these consumers.

Age Cohorts & Generations

There are four consumption cohorts, or generations, who are active in today’s consumer culture; Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y (or Millennials), and Generation Z. Let’s break down each one and examine some similarities and differences, keeping in mind, these are generalizations and there are exceptions within each generation.

• Baby Boomers: born between 1946 and 1964. The huge wave of baby boomers began arriving in 1946, following World War II, and marketers have been catering to them ever since. What are they like? Sociologists have attributed to them such characteristics as “individuality, tolerance, and self-absorption.” In the United States, there are seventy million of them, and as they marched through life over the course of five decades, marketers crowded the roadside to supply them with toys, clothes, cars, homes, and appliances—whatever they needed at the time. They’re still a major marketing force, but their needs have changed: they’re now the target market for pharmaceutical products, mobility aids, retirement investments, cruises, and retirement communities. Baby Booms have a high amount of disposable income, are affluent, and more “tech savvy” than many might realize. For marketers, the most effective way to reach Baby Boomers is through television advertisements, email marketing, paid search, and Facebook advertisements.
• Generation X: born between 1965 and 1981. Because birth rates had declined by the time the “Gen X” babies first arrived in 1965, this group had just one decade to grow its numbers. Thus, it’s considerably smaller (seventeen million) than the baby-boomer group, and it has also borne the brunt of rising divorce rates and the arrival of AIDS. Experts say, however, that they’re diverse, savvy, and pragmatic and point out that even though they were once thought of as “slackers,” they actually tend to be self-reliant and successful. At this point in their lives, most are at their peak earning power and affluent enough to make marketers stand up and take notice.
• Generation Y (“Millennials”): born between 1982 and 1997. When they became parents, baby boomers delivered a group to rival their own. Born between 1976 and 2001, their sixty million children are sometimes called “echo boomers” (because their population boom is a reverberation of the baby boom). They’re still evolving, but they’ve already been assigned some attributes: they’re committed to integrity and honesty, they’re family oriented and close to parents, ethnically diverse and accepting of differences, upbeat and optimistic about the future (although the troubled economy is lessening their optimism), education focused, independent, and goal oriented. They also seem to be coping fairly well: among today’s teens, arrests, drug use, drunk driving, and school dropout rates are all down. Since many consumers in this bracket may still be paying off student loans, Generation Y’s discretionary income might be less than other generational groups of consumers. Generation Ys are being courted by carmakers. Global car manufacturers have launched a number of 2012 cars designed to cater to the members of Generation Y. Advertisers are also busy trying to find innovative ways to reach this group, but they’re finding that it’s not easy. Generation Ys grew up with computers and other modes of high technology, and they’re used to doing several things at once—simultaneously watching TV, texting, and playing games on the computer. As a result, they’re quite adept at tuning out ads. Try to reach them through TV ads and they’ll channel-surf right past them. You can’t get to them over the Internet because they know all about pop-up blockers. In one desperate attempt to get their attention, an advertiser paid college students fifty cents to view thirty-second ads on their computers. Advertisers keep trying, because Generation Y is big enough to wreck a brand by giving it a cold shoulder.
• Generation Z (“Digital Natives”): born between 1997 and today. Generation Z has never known a world before technology. They have grown up in an “always on” world where technology is readily available and used on a regular basis. Technology has been utilized as a babysitter by many parents of this generation and it is also present in the classroom. This constant access to technology makes Generation Z extremely tech savvy but has also changed behaviour and lifestyle. Whether or not these behavioural and lifestyle changes will carry on into their adulthood is yet to be determined. Generation Z is starting to enter into the workforce with the oldest members turning 24-years-old in 2021.