Why Younger Consumers Are Cause for Concern in Alcoholic Beverages Category

[kevinb1994]

https://csnews.com/why-younger-consumers-are-cause-concern-alcoholic-beverages-category

I am not much of a drinker myself.

[hotdogPi]

The whole "Generation X/Y/Z"/"Millennial" thing needs to be fixed. Most sources I can find state that someone born in 1999 (which I was) is a millennial, with a few saying the (so far unnamed) generation after. However, both of my parents were baby boomers, and I believe all four of my grandparents were in the generation before that, making me unambiguously Generation X.

[kevinb1994]

The whole "Generation X/Y/Z"/"Millennial" thing needs to be fixed. Most sources I can find state that someone born in 1999 (which I was) is a millennial, with a few saying the (so far unnamed) generation after. However, both of my parents were baby boomers, and I believe all four of my grandparents were in the generation before that, making me unambiguously Generation X.

Yeah there's lots of contradictory information out there. I was born in 1994, making me a millennial as well. As with you, both of my parents were baby boomers, but only three of my four grandparents were born in the generation before that, with the lone exception being my paternal grandfather, who was born at the tail end of the generation before that.

[MNHighwayMan]

Yeah there's lots of contradictory information out there.

For that reason (and others), I think shoehorning people into poorly defined generations is a waste of effort.

Dubbing those born between 1995 and 2007 "the sober generation"

Whew, not me!

[Max Rockatansky]

Last I checked plenty of people in their late teens and early twenties will drink about anything they can get their hands on.  Hell, I remember the only time I've ever drank a Natural Light was in college dorms at Michigan State where my Brother-in-Law and his friends were too poor to buy anything else. 

[NE2]

Why kevinb1994 is cause for clickbait

[jeffandnicole]

For example, a 21-year-old college student is going to have very different motivations to enter the alcoholic beverage category compared to a 33-year-old father of young children.

When I first read this, I thought this was written by a college kid.  At the end of the story, the writer was a senior editor. Wow.

[formulanone]

Last I checked plenty of people in their late teens and early twenties will drink about anything they can get their hands on.  Hell, I remember the only time I've ever drank a Natural Light was in college dorms at Michigan State where my Brother-in-Law and his friends were too poor to buy anything else. 

Winner Winner, beer can chicken dinner. That's pretty much the gist of it.

The whole "Generation X/Y/Z"/"Millennial" thing needs to be fixed. Most sources I can find state that someone born in 1999 (which I was) is a millennial, with a few saying the (so far unnamed) generation after. However, both of my parents were baby boomers, and I believe all four of my grandparents were in the generation before that, making me unambiguously Generation X.

For one, the Generational Designation is typically all about creating marketing strategies. Not much else.

Much of it is usually a work-in-progress, since tastes are changing at a greater clip as the population, and therefore, the amount of social influences increase in one's surroundings.

No one person is going to fit the mould perfectly, since there's lots of personal tastes and regional flavor that has to be factored in. Never mind there's always waves and washes of counter-culture which do things differently, because of personal and emotional reasons. But there's many generalizations that follow; as one generation ages, there's different things they want to buy to strive for with increased purchasing power. Every other person thinks they were born in the "wrong generation". Not everyone is going to do the Popular Thing or The Now Trend every moment of one's life. Marketers don't care, they'll find what prys open the hatch which contains one's desires, fear, and loathing, and will target you on emotional insecurity somehow. They work with generalizations and statistics, and undermine your wallet one way or another. You still need to eat, get dressed, work, play, rest, and repair yourself.

Anyhow, I don't quite think it's when your parents are born - but how society and technological waves affect the public at large which can affect you and your tastes. Technically, my parents were born just before the Baby Boom, but I was born ten years after that ended. I think Generation X started around 1965, and vaguely stopped for those born in 1980-1981; supposedly, one of those markers are for when MTV/Cable TV popularized, the 1980s started up, and all the other cultural influences. I've heard before that the X meant it was arguably the Tenth generation born since America was declared independence. Which seems weird, since only a small percentage of Americans can trace their families' history that far back to the first days of post-Colonial times.

"Millennial" seems to be the point from 1981-ish to 1995; not sure why chose that point. Perhaps because 15 years seems a good point to stand back and realize there's less in common with those times? The popularity of the Internet, yet can recall the times before its all-pervasiveness? Maybe when the events of 9/11 created a noticeable change in lifestyle? But I recall the name meant that first ones became adults around the Turn of the Millennium, although I can't say I head the name used until about 7-8 years ago. Perhaps that's when many of them started to have some disposable income.

The recent one is Generation Z...supposedly those born from 1995 to 2010 (?). Sorry, they weren't very creative with that one; but as times change, they might come up with another name for it. Or change the time span for it. Right now, that story is still being written. The first few years of this generation are finally getting out of college. It's assumed they've never known a time without the Internet, and grew up alongside the purported desirability of portable computing/phones. And you'll be labelled and accused of as "lazy, unmotivated, broke, listens-to-weird-music, strange" et al just like every other generation was before it. Oddly, lots of people will lump you in with Millennials because they're still pissed off about something...I dunno, killing shopping malls* and creating debt*? Guess what...you'll do the same to the next generation.

Who cares? If you want to play Pokemon on a rocking chair while swapping stories about 1980s hair-metal bands (and include something about them "smirtfones" to sound hip), enjoy.

* yes, blame those who didn't have money or refused to carry a previous generation's emotional baggage. Very easy take.

[abefroman329]

Last I checked plenty of people in their late teens and early twenties will drink about anything they can get their hands on.  Hell, I remember the only time I've ever drank a Natural Light was in college dorms at Michigan State where my Brother-in-Law and his friends were too poor to buy anything else.

That is exactly what I thought when I read this article.

And yes, the generational boundaries are nebulous. I think of myself as Generation X, and my boss, who is about six months younger than me, identifies as a millennial.

[abefroman329]

I do find the incessant "millennials are killing [business/industry]"  hilarious, though. Not to mention the constant cycle of people thinking the youngest generation are awful.

[english si]

The whole "Generation X/Y/Z"/"Millennial" thing needs to be fixed. Most sources I can find state that someone born in 1999 (which I was) is a millennial, with a few saying the (so far unnamed) generation after. However, both of my parents were baby boomers, and I believe all four of my grandparents were in the generation before that, making me unambiguously Generation X.

It doesn't work like that - not least as sociological generations are not very long (especially with ages people become parents post-1960) - roughly 20 years and invented in the 80s as part of a bigger thing with a pattern repeating every 4 generations that was not taken well (unflattering comparisons to astrology were common in reviews of the book):  Lost: 17 years (83-00), GI: 23 years (01-24), Silent: 17 years (25-42), Boomers: 17 years (43-60), Gen X: 20 years (61-81), Millennials: 18 years (82-99), 'iGen': 18+ years? (00-now). OK, these dates are disputed about where precisely to put them, but these seem to roughly be it. Gen X was the one that people latched onto and it stuck, meaning that people started using these categories for everyone else too.

A sociological generation was skipped by your family (as it was by mine). You are "Millennial" to demographers - if not then the generation after (many demographers feel the always-connected defining feature of that generation means it begins a couple of years before/after 2000), because what matters on this logic is not parents, but peers.

Oh, and if there's one demographic group that wind me up more than tail-end Millennials (giving the rest of us a bad name), it's Gen X with their notion that they are the cool kids who rule the roost - cf Gen X people continuing to insist on naming the next two generations in their image as 'Y' and 'Z' despite their being an official name for 'Y' and several proposed for 'Z'. You've jumped out of frying pan and into the fire there!

But yeah, it's all a load of annoying nonsense, whereby people are not treated as individuals. When it's handy shorthand for people who deal in demographics, sure, when it's made an identity - yuck.

PS: Gen X was named by Copeland (making it the only generation named by one of them - no wonder why its the one that's most accepted by the people of it!). The quacks who came up with the concept had them as the 13th generation after the Revolution. And if Copeland counted differently and got ten and thus 'X', then that makes the Gen Y thing even more arrogant and insulting as the naming pattern changes from Roman Numerals to the Alphabet around the egotist generation! 

---

I find it funny how the article begins by saying that young people not chugging back loads of cheap swill, but supping smaller quantities of higher-quality premium products is bad for the beer industry - it's not, unless you are the marketing director of Bud Light or similar (and if you are the marketing director of Bud Light, that is, in and of itself, a whole pit of misery worse than young people preferring better beer. Dilly dilly!). All the big parent companies have been buying up smaller breweries for decades, letting them keep brand and creative independence for the last decade (rather than having them churn out the same stuff all over) to cash in on the reaction against the big brewers brewing the same old stuff.

As this article explains, the UK lager industry moved, in the early 00s, from spending money on advertising, to spending money on promotions in stores - they noticed that the transition from pub to home drinking meant that brand loyalty was dying, and what was the cheapest was what was bought. They also made their already-cheap already-crap products cheaper and crappier. They still advertise (well Fosters does), but what this shift has meant is that their drinkers are more likely to be people in their 80s, than people born in the 80s. People born in the 80s that are lager drinkers like their lager from a known big continental brewer (which are far from the best, but they are easily available and consistent) - often despite (or because of - 'reassuringly expensive' as Stella puts it) its premium price - and go with shots on the side if they just want to get drunk.

This Guardian piece on the same theme blames pubs rather than people for the decline in going out drinking (though as it is the Guardian, they neglect to mention that beer tax being much higher than 20 years ago is a key reason why it's pricey, as are high rents that have killed UK High Streets too).

[english si]

my boss, who is about six months younger than me, identifies as a millennial.

39 years ago is close to the artificial boundary, by some reckonings (the 1980 one, rather than the being a child when the Millennium turned one that's much more common) - so you might legit be either side of it.

the youngest generation

Millennials are all adults now (by most definitions of the terms in that claim there), with most of a generation existing younger than them, but the whole narrative against them means that anything High Schoolers do bad is blamed on 'Millennials'.

Of course, when you have meaningless categories defined by quackery with arbitrary cut-offs...

And, the same sort of articles happened to Gen X in the early 90s, when their generation were at about the same phase as the Millennials are now.

[Max Rockatansky]

Last I checked plenty of people in their late teens and early twenties will drink about anything they can get their hands on.  Hell, I remember the only time I've ever drank a Natural Light was in college dorms at Michigan State where my Brother-in-Law and his friends were too poor to buy anything else.

That is exactly what I thought when I read this article.

And yes, the generational boundaries are nebulous. I think of myself as Generation X, and my boss, who is about six months younger than me, identifies as a millennial.

Hell I used to have a bottle of vodka in the apartment that I would serve because it was cheaper to just mix in with Coke than buy even the cheapest beer.  You basically do what you have to when your purchases come down to the last cent at that age.

[abefroman329]

my boss, who is about six months younger than me, identifies as a millennial.

39 years ago is close to the artificial boundary, by some reckonings (the 1980 one, rather than the being a child when the Millennium turned one that's much more common) - so you might legit be either side of it.

the youngest generation

Millennials are all adults now (by most definitions of the terms in that claim there), with most of a generation existing younger than them, but the whole narrative against them means that anything High Schoolers do bad is blamed on 'Millennials'.

Of course, when you have meaningless categories defined by quackery with arbitrary cut-offs...

And, the same sort of articles happened to Gen X in the early 90s, when their generation were at about the same phase as the Millennials are now.

I was born in March 1979, she was born in the fall.  For both of us it came down to reading the description of each generation and deciding which one we identified with.

I agree that (a) the categories are largely meaningless and (b) the people we think of as "millennials" now aren't actually millennials; millennials are in their late 20s and early 30s.  And with regards to the latter, I think "millennial" has replaced "hipster" as a term that means little more than "person whose beliefs and aesthetics the speaker hates."

[abefroman329]

Last I checked plenty of people in their late teens and early twenties will drink about anything they can get their hands on.  Hell, I remember the only time I've ever drank a Natural Light was in college dorms at Michigan State where my Brother-in-Law and his friends were too poor to buy anything else.

That is exactly what I thought when I read this article.

And yes, the generational boundaries are nebulous. I think of myself as Generation X, and my boss, who is about six months younger than me, identifies as a millennial.

Hell I used to have a bottle of vodka in the apartment that I would serve because it was cheaper to just mix in with Coke than buy even the cheapest beer.  You basically do what you have to when your purchases come down to the last cent at that age.

I feel like I was a special case because I lived in DC and worked for the Senate when I was in my early 20s, which meant low pay in a city with a high cost of living, but it was pregaming, and all-you-can-drink specials, and attending receptions I didn't particularly care about just for the free food and booze, as far as the eye could see.

[SP Cook]

IMHO,

- The whole "this generation is changing this or that business model" is just empty writing. 

- A-B and MCM spill more beer than all of these idiotic microbrewers sell. 

- Del Webb was born dirt poor.  And died a billionaire.  Selling a product that no one under 55 could buy.  You can jump into trying to compete with everybody for the core market.  Or you can find a niche and win big.

[mgk920]

Without reading the article, in the USA, the changes in the brewing industry started in the late 1970s when President Carter signed a law allowing individuals to once again legally brew their own beer at home.  Ambitious hobbyist brewers then started working with different flavors and brewing styles and over time began dabbling into commercial brewing.  Fast forward a couple of decades and these micro brewers are moving from the niche into the mainstreams of adult beverages, ditto wineries and distilleries.

IMHO, it is not a this generation v. that generation thing, rather that the USA is finally fully recovering from Prohibition, the 18th Amendment days from 1920 through 1933 when making, importing and transporting beverage alcohol was unconstitutional, before which the USA was world renowned for the quality of the beer, wine, whiskey and other adult beverages that it produced - and finally regaining its taste for and ability to make GOOD STUFF.

I was listening to an interesting radio discussion on this matter a few months ago where it was stated that there are now more operating commercial breweries in the USA than there were at any time prior to 1920.  Even the trendiest flavored micro beers of today are ALL a 'Back to the Future' thing - they were the norm before Prohibition.

I fully believe that.

Mike

[jon daly]

I wouldn't call this clickbait, the links aren't THAT tempting. Perhaps the OP should consolidate all of these links into a c-store thread. Of course, it is easier to criticize than create threads...

FWIW, it is only recently that I've seen many Connecticut convenience stores that sell beer. Generally speaking, you cannot sell both beer and gasoline at the same location in Conn..

[jon daly]

THen again, maybe NE2 is suggesting the the OP works for csnews.com.

[webny99]

The whole "Generation X/Y/Z"/"Millennial" thing needs to be fixed. Most sources I can find state that someone born in 1999 (which I was) is a millennial, with a few saying the (so far unnamed) generation after. However, both of my parents were baby boomers, and I believe all four of my grandparents were in the generation before that, making me unambiguously Generation X.

Interesting!

I was born in 1999, too, but my parents were born in the very late 60's/early 70's, making them very distinctly part of Generation X. I am the oldest in my family, and among the oldest of my grandparent's grandchildren, too. And my grandparents were baby boomers, being born in the early 50's. You must be the youngest, or at least towards the bottom, of your family. I certainly regard myself as a millennial (some sources say millennials must be born before 1997, but I think 2000 is a much better cut-off date).

I agree that the whole "generation" thing portends a lot of problems, and is largely meaningless fluff. The baby boomers are very distinctly a generation, due to the wave of births, but it's almost impossible to keep track of what happens after that. The next generation(s) haven't evolved in such a structured wave, i.e. the big wave has caused mere ripples, not additional waves.

[abefroman329]

- The whole "this generation is changing this or that business model" is just empty writing.

And even if millennials really are killing off casual dining and the diamond industry, it's no great loss.

[abefroman329]

THen again, maybe NE2 is suggesting the the OP works for csnews.com.

It's more likely that he's being an ass for no apparent reason.

[jon daly]

I was born in 1968 and couldn't imagine having a kid in 1999. I'm a late bloomer and never got around to being fruitful and multiplying.

[jon daly]

^Probably because I was drinking too often as a young man. (Bringing this thread full circle.)

[Brandon]

THen again, maybe NE2 is suggesting the the OP works for csnews.com.

It's more likely that he's being an ass for no apparent reason.

And the sky is blue, water is wet, and yes, a bear shits in the woods.