• NY Times, Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:45 PM

Marketers are beginning to discover that the Holy Grail of demographic groups may not be the 18- to 49-year-old segment after all. After years of targeting consumers in that age bracket because of their perceived youthfulness, advertisers are now realizing that perhaps they have wrongly ignored an even more powerful group of consumers with considerable amounts of money to spend--the baby boomers. Marketers of automobiles, financial services and packaged goods are finding that even though the boomers are aging--many of them are moving into their 60s--they still embrace the consumer culture as enthusiastically as they did in their younger years. "Those wishing to be successful in the market can't ignore the boomer numbers, the wealth and spending power they have," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman and national managing principal for the consumer business practice at Deloitte & Touche in Indianapolis. "The boomers have redefined every age they've moved through, so there's no reason to believe they will not redefine the stereotypes of what it means to be retired," he added. "Depression babies saved, not spending unless it was necessary. But because this generation grew up in prosperity, they don't have that bunker mentality. They're not worried about putting money in the mattress."

Read the whole story at NY Times »