Highlighting key points from his book, The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think, Bobby Duffy presented his research on generational thinking as a powerful idea corrupted by stereotypes, myths, and cliches. As he tracked today’s generations over time (Pre-War, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z) to see what is truly generational, Bobby looked for gaps between young and old on attitudes to everything from drinking, smoking, and loneliness to race, gender equality and climate change. He found that many analyses and forecasts about consumer behavior ignore the complexity of change, that is, they only look at one of the three mechanisms that cause changes: Cohort Effects—Behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are more common among members of a generation; Period Effects—Changes resulting from events and circumstances that affect everybody, all generations, from war and disasters to periods of economic boom; Life-Cycle Effects—Members of all generations change as they grow older and experience getting married, having children, etc. The key to using generational analyses in consumer behavior forecasts, therefore, is to untangle these three mechanisms and recognize the importance of period and life-cycle effects to avoid overstating cohort effects.
