If you were born between 1946
and 1964, that qualifies
you as a baby boomer in the eyes of
marketing people to save you the
arithmetic, that's twenty to thirty nine
years old.
Within five years, over half the
households in the country will be headed
by baby boomers.
A large proportion of working women,
almost 60 percent of all the adult women
are now in the workforce.
One and two person households are very
important part of this segment.
By the end of this year, half of all the
household units in the US will
be one and two person households.
This group is interested in service
and saving time and inconvenience.
The Food Marketing Institute, which Karen
Brown works for, represents many major
retail and wholesale food marketers.
The shopping convenience she mentioned
turned up as a major factor for baby
boomer grocery shopping service
and checkout, as well as the close
location seemed to be all important.
You might think nutrition would be, but
it's not. It's less important to baby
boomers than older shoppers, and it also
shows up in the lack of reading the
labels on packages.
Experts say it doesn't necessarily mean
younger folks don't care.
It's just that many bad habits have
already changed.
It's a nation we've already made
tremendous changes in our eating habits,
with year to year differences beginning
to stabilize now.
And since people tend to be most
interested in information when they're
seeking out new data to make
changes in their own personal habits,
interest in nutrition remains high, but
is perhaps a little less intense than it
was when we were first learning to change
our diets with time so important
to baby boomers.
It's not surprising to see them buying
more convenience foods.
They're not always the cheapest, but many
of those baby boomers make up for it by
buying more generics and house brands
than other age groups.
It all adds up to a large financial
influence on what grocery stores put on
their shelves for all of us to buy.