Page 96 - MYM 2015

database organization, Prosper International. (www. goprosper.com) Prosper is an online research supplier for some of the largest marketing organizations in the U.S. such as Walmart, Kohl’s, American Express, National Retail Federation and others. They have been collecting consumer questionnaire responses online in the U.S. since 2001 and in China since 2006. Using some of that data, a historical view of consumer generational research is provided. That illustrates some of the advantages and pitfalls of any type
of generational analysis. In other words, we “mine” the available Prosper data to investigate, con rm, reject or adapt some of today’s most commonly held beliefs on the various generations described in the marketing literature today. Much of our analysis focuses on age groups born after 1980 since that or those “generations”, i.e. the millennials or the digital generation has received the most attention among marketers, media and pundits.
In the sections that follow, a number of investigatory areas that have not commonly been discussed in the literature but which, we argue, are necessary to provide a holistic view of the real impact of generational data and the ndings that are being distributed today, are discussed. As with much big data research today, we do not create a set of hypotheses to be tested. Instead, we propose a set of research questions, investigate them in the data sets and then let the results speak for themselves. We term these investigations “postulates”, that is, they are assumption of the existence, fact or truth of our ndings as a basis for reasoning, discussion or belief. (Merriam-webster.com, 2014)
Data Source for Generational Research
Prosper International (www.goprosper.com) is a major supplier of online research for a large number of global commercial and media organizations. Headquartered in Worthington, OH (USA), Prosper has been conducting online research in the U.S. since 2001 and in China since 2006. Thus, they have created and provided continuing, track-able and analyze-able data sets since their founding. They have made some of that data available to academic institutions for investigatory research. That provides the research base for this paper.
Prosper conducts ongoing online consumer research through a number of syndicated vehicles in addition to their bespoke research for individual companies. The primary resources used in this paper are the Media and Behavior Intentions (MBI) online studies, conducted twice yearly in the U.S. since 2001. This study gathers data from consumers age 18+ on their media usage, habits, the influence media has
on their purchase decisions and the like. The normal participation in the MBI study is approximately 20,000 consumers per wave which are weighted and balanced to provide a representative sample of the U. S. population each time it is conducted. The second data set comes from monthly studies called Consumer Intentions and Actions (CIA). These are also conducted online with adults 18+ years of age. These studies too are weighted and balanced to provide a representative sample of the entire U.S. population. These smaller studies (average response rate 8,000) focus on what consumers bought in the last 30 days and what they anticipate purchasing in the next 30, 60 and 90 day periods along with their media usage patterns and other useful variables. The third form of data is specialized studies conducted for individual firms which are focused on specific topics. Called the American Pulse Studies, these specialized, focused, occasional studies are also based on online questionnaires, which may or may not have a preliminary screen to identify the persons of interest. They are generally based on samples of 2,500 to 3,000 respondents.
The Prosper data sets have been widely used in academic research. For example, Shopper Cards: Beyond Data and Discounts and Retail Store Shopper Cards: Competitive Differentiator? Journal of Retail Analytics (Schultz and block, 2014) it is these data sets which are used in the analyses which follow.
A Historical View of Generational Data
Use of the Prosper data sets to specifically focus
on and investigate generational differences
began in 2004-2005. The first output of those research studies was published in 2009 as a
book on consumer media usage. The text “Media Generations: Media Allocation in a Consumer- Controlled Marketplace” (Block and Schultz, 2009) explained and illustrated the impact and effect of age cohorts/generational classifications the changing nature of media consumption in the U.S. That publication was followed by “Retail Communities: Customer-Driven Retailing” (Schultz, Block and Schultz, 2010) again using age/cohort-focused consumer reported actions to define and develop
an explanation of the changing retail purchasing patterns of consumers in the U.S. The focus shifted in the next text. “Understanding China’s Digital Generation: A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding Young Chinese Consumers”. (Schultz, Block and Schultz, 2013) That used consumer data gathered in China which was then compared to similar data
96 I October 2015