A version of this article appeared in print on April 20, 2009, on page B1 of the New York edition.
A billboard in Times Square for Target features an older woman on a bicycle.
By STUART ELLIOTT
Published: April 19, 2009
When Brian Gordon and his partners started ebeanstalk.com, which sells children’s learning toys online, they expected most of business to come from younger consumers starting families. But a recent customer survey found that up to 40 percent were actually older, mainly grandparents.
If you’d asked me if 4 out of 10 people would be grandparents, I’d have said, ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’ ” Mr. Gordon said.Also surprising, Mr. Gordon says, is that despite the economy, sales are up about 65 percent so far this year compared with a year earlier. He attributed that largely to older consumers, who “are our most demanding customers” but are more willing than their younger counterparts are to pay full price.
The experience of ebeanstalk.com illustrates a growing trend as the recession grinds on: an increasing interest in marketing goods and services to consumers age 50 and older. Among those aiming more at the older demographic are giants like Chrysler, Kraft Foods, L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble and Target.
The interest has also been a boon to media outlets that appeal to older viewers. CBS, home of “60 minutes” and the “CSI” franchise, is first in the network ratings, and while all magazines have had their advertising pages hammered, some titles for more mature readers, including AARP magazine and Family Circle, have suffered smaller downturns.
For decades, older consumers were largely shunned by marketers because they were deemed less wealthy, less likely to try new products and less willing to change brands. Campaigns directed at them were described dismissively as made for the “Geritol generation.” As much as older consumers were to be shunned, young consumers — ages 18 to 34, or 18 to 49 — were desired for what were deemed their free-spending ways, eagerness to sample new products and brand-switching proclivities. The idea that they were starting in life with a proverbial blank slate of marketing wants and needs was catnip to product peddlers.
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There are fewer worries when you're a kid. Your parents provide for all your material and emotional needs. As a person grows old, their needs and wants also grow with them. And finally, when they graduate college, it is now time to start a life of their own.
Looking for the right career that is of great interest to you can be quite hard. But if you successfully choose a good career and decide to keep it, you're life will be worth living.
There are many career paths to take. So before anything else, you should make sure that you're on the right path. Oftentimes, people end up with a job or career that they are not interested in; they simply manage to push through with it because they need the money.
In today's hard times, having a good paying job is already enough. You can finance all your expenses, most especially if you have children to support. But if the situation is like this, a time will come when you will finally get tired of doing a work that you're not interested in.
If you belong in the generation of the baby boomers, you already have a career by now. You're the type of person who wants to work harder and for longer hours. If you want a career change, it's never too late. In fact, most of the baby boomers in the workforce are retiring late, and there are still those who change their careers. Most boomers want to continue in contributing or working even after they retire.
It's common to change a career in your lifetime. You can even find people who changed their careers more than three times. The reason behind this is that they haven't found yet the right career that they can be satisfied with, and what they love doing. Perhaps they will stop changing careers only after they found what suits their needs and wants.
Confronting a career change for a baby boomer can be a bit difficult. Boomers grew up in a prosperous world, where everything was easy for them to have like education and their material needs. And with today's competitive market, a baby boomer should be able to compete with other capable people.
It would be better to view a career change as an opportunity to find a better career, one that will suit you best. You should find a job that you love doing and one that you could be satisfied with until you retire from work.
Around 3% of people going through changes in their career are only forced to do so because they were laid-off and about 4.5% just want to explore something else. Undergoing a shift in career will be much easier, enjoyable, and productive if you do a couple of things like:
1. assess your skills and see if it can be used in other jobs
2. money doesn't matter to most people; so find a job that is meaningful for you, one that you love doing
3. find where your passion lies
4. always be realistic; if your skills doesn't suit the job, you're probably better of without it
5. do you want to stay in the profession or do you want a radical change in your career
6. if you're satisfied with the present company that you belong, perhaps you can ask for re-training
7. don't mind your age, what's important is your skills and the things that you can do
8. you can join organizations in the field that you're interested in
These are just few of the things that you can do before seeking for a new career. Your job experience matters in getting into another career, as well as relevant trainings.
Change is natural. The world changes every day; inventions can happen overnight. But with a career change, you can't do it with the snap of your finger. You should consider a lot of things like your family, your needs, and other important matters.
It's never too late for baby boomers. You've lived your life long enough as a happy-go-lucky individual. It's time to stick with the realities of life and start working hard in your new-found career.
If you would like to have a free ecourse on the opportunities now available, you can get it here.
If you are enjoying how you live today in the United States, you should realize that the freedom you enjoy is the work of the past generation. Today, there is less discrimination and people are now fully enjoying their civil rights as a citizen of the United States. You should realize the fact that a particular generation is one of the major contributors in the society that you see today.
This generation is called the baby boomers generation. So, what is the baby boomers generation? First of all, baby boomers were people who were born between the years 1946 to 1964. This generation is called baby boomers generation because of the significant increase in birth rate during these years.
Baby boomers play a very distinct role in society today and are very politically active. This is because of the way they grew up. The baby boomers generation grew up in a world where the Vietnam War started and civil rights protests were active. It is important for you to remember that early baby boomers came of age during the times where civil rights, the Vietnam War and conscription were being protested.
You should also realize the fact that most baby boomers grew up in an era where the cold war started. Because of the political condition of their country where they grew up in, baby boomers are well aware of their civil rights and also about the different political situations and policies that the country is facing today. Besides, they were the ones who contributed in emphasizing more freedom and they also contributed in equality of all citizens of the United States. This is one of the reasons why the United States is experiencing less or no discrimination at work. Thanks to baby boomers, every American citizen will be able to have equal opportunity for employment regardless of race, creed, gender and age.
Baby boomers were also born in times where the American Military virtually dominated the world. For this reason, you will see that the baby boomers generation presidents, namely Bill Clinton and the incumbent President George W. Bush emphasized widely on civil rights and also in reforming and increasing funds for the US Military research and development.
You will also see that they also increased NASA funding because they were born in the era where space travel started.
In the internet, you will see that there are a lot of studies about baby boomers. You will see their history and also the projected future.
In the internet, you will see news that concerns baby boomers, such as retirement and health benefits. The reason for the concern of the United States government is about the retirement and health benefits funding. Because of the significantly high population of baby boomers today, the government projects that it affects will slow down the economic growth of the United States. This is because funding will be concentrated on the retirement of baby boomers, especially now that baby boomers are starting to enter the retirement age.
Government and private sectors concerned are now working together to fund the retirement and health benefits of baby boomers. The Social Security and the Medicare are two of the sectors concerned in the retirement of the large population of baby boomers in the United States.
In fact, there were about 78 million births during the baby boomers era. Today, the baby boomers make up 22% of the total American population. With this kind of population, who wouldn't be concerned when most of the baby boomers retire?
The fact that the birth rate declined after the baby boomers era, it is a reality that workforce will decrease and retirees will increase. This means less income for the country and more expenses for the retirees. This is why the government and numerous private organizations are now taking the necessary steps to provide sufficient financial and health retirement benefits to baby boomers.
Always remember that these people helped contribute a lot in politics, academic, culture, and also in the industrial sector. They helped in making what the country is today. This is why it is just right that the government and private sectors concerned should repay them when they go into retirement.
Daniel Silver
Baby Boomers and Younger Generation Opposing Viewpoint on Voting and Politics
Younger generations in the United States do not show much interest in the political games of boomers although recently, they are not the largest population of voters.
There was even an incidence when Matthew Shephard, the mother and symbol of hate-crime against homosexuals in Chicago expressed her dismay in front of the Roosevelt University. She questioned the political activism of the present generation for not expressing themselves the way they did before. She even recalled the times when boomers confronted authority.
The problem was that boomers are approaching retirement and perhaps losing their agility to make the same protests again. The new generation is asking a different set of questions. Some suggested to get rid off the authority and stop asking questions like what the boomer radicals did during the 60's.
The point of the new generation is to know where the authority goes. They see that the voter driver's efforts are nonsense. Even if they keep on pursuing the slogans "Rock the Vote" and "Vote or Die"; still it lacks assessment on the federal government's credibility. New generations cannot get what the government wants to emphasize. They observed that in order to obtain good things from the government, one should exercise their right to vote.
But these young people display activeness in their own way. They even exceeded performances of the baby boomers in numerous campaign activities like displaying bumper stickers, signs, and buttons, attending rallies, and persuading others to vote.
A great Sociologist, Robert Nisbet distinguished the terms authority and power. Power is a force while authority can be forged on social bonds of churches, families, communities, and business. Despite the rage of baby boomers against authority, they have accumulated lots of power for their bureaucracy. It might be under Bush or Clinton, R or D. It took off before the new generation of unwieldy and impersonal youths.
The new generation knew what power meant. They didn't want the baby boomers to tell them where it is and how to seek it. They are disposed by cultural usurpations touching their personal lives to become contemptuous of power. Young Americans know divorce power, Eric Harris and Klebold's power, Jerry Springer's power, teen sex power, abortion power, and Osama bin Laden's power. These are not the types of power that they crave because they have already seen its consequences. What they seek is a confident, strong, gentle, and honor-bound authority.
It cannot be denied that young voters are cynical concerning national politics largely different from apathy. The children born during the 80's named as Reagan's Children never invested their time on direct political procedures. They have changed the boomer's action to entrepreneurialism, community service, technology, and religion. They are after an authority which governs rather than an established government which has nothing to offer. Politics might also be the interest of the new generation, however in a very different perspective far from what their forefathers wanted them to inherit. They perceive that government as federal and big, centers on mobilizing the youth on their voting rights.
The person controlling the polls will gain larger percentage of the national power. But no one knows if the voting booths are sacredly held by baby boomers and beats the relationship authority prized by prospective young voters. It is possible that the obsession for power of the boomers generation will defeat the young American generation who hungers for authority. This could happen since boomers defeated that authority already.
However, everybody never wanted a generational clash. The boomer retirees are just determined in living life to the fullest as an expense on their children's paid taxes. However, this provokes wars in the Congress related on government costs. Thus it confounds their capacity to serve, to invest, and to love. Younger statesmen said that it is the cost that matters not their responsibilities, paid taxes, and freedom. The boomers power-hungry declaration requires the new generation (committed on authority institutions and focused on internet economy) to vote, to join politics, and fight the gray-haired builders of a powerful government.
In such struggle, they have enlisted a constitutional language which starts on securing their liberty blessings to themselves and prosperity. The task of the new generation is to save those blessings in threat more than ordering the people to vote.
Daniel Silver
http://danslearningcenter.com
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