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Para já interessa-me salientar o que o autor pensa que será o futuro do retalho:
"Today, 50 years after the wave of 1960s consumption began, the very youngest baby boomers are 49 years old. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is a statistical certainty that spending among Americans begins to decline after the age of 50. (Moi ici: E na Europa não será diferente. E, na Europa o avanço demográfico está muito mais avançado) We simply need less stuff once we reach 50 and beyond. In fact, most of us by that age are trying to pawn our junk off on our kids! This natural decline in spending typically conies gradually as a generation ages. What's happened, however, has been a more abrupt shutting off of the tap as boomers, many of whom lost ground in the stock and real estate markets, begin to reevaluate their situations. Many have found themselves standing at the edge of the precipice of retirement without a parachute. Statistics aside, some would argue that boomers are still the wealthiest generation in history, and that their spending won't simply dry up, but will merely shift away from certain categories like electronics and housewares and toward others like travel and health services. And while this shift is already taking place, there are other issues that are only now beginning to surface. One is that baby boomers are carrying record debt loads. (Moi ici: Recordar estes números no caso nacional)
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So, the unfortunate news for retailers is that this is by no means a mere recession. There is no neat and tidy recovery around the corner. There is no natural heir apparent to the baby boomer consumer. There is no one easily targetable group like the baby boomers out there to sell to. And unlike during the 196os, there's no big fat homogenous segment in today's market. It just doesn't exist. (Moi ici: Segue-se uma descrição de Mongo) The prototypical household that represented the big bull's-eye in the market is an increasing minority. In fact, today's consumer market comprises a myriad of lifestyles, family compositions, ethnic backgrounds and economic standings, and all of it seems to amount to less direct influence on who buys what. Identifying your "ideal target consumer" in this landscape is, as one of my most loved bosses used to say, like trying to "pick fly shit out of pepper." In other words, it's really hard!
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he sees as a hopeful horizon where consumers actually take back control of their behavior, holding themselves and the companies they do business with to higher business and social standards. It will be a time when responsible purchasing can mitigate the rampant consumerism that marked the boomer decades. His research pointed to a consumer who had become infinitely more mindful and considered in his or her purchasing behavior, and who had begun to anchor his or her brand choices to starkly different values than in years past. The more traditionally sought-after brand attributes of convenience, selection and price had begun, he found, to give way to new and deeper qualities like kindness, empathy and lasting quality. Consumers, it seemed, longed to return to a time when they could actually like the places they shopped and feel good about spending their money there. There was one thing in particular from our conversation, though, that really stuck with me. John stated that while many were calling this post-crisis economic climate the new normal, he actually saw it as being the old normal. In John's mind, it was the last 50 years that were really more of an anomaly, relative to consumer behavior throughout the rest of history. (Moi ici: Quantos pensam nisto? Quantos admitem estudar esta hipótese? O que dirá Vieira Lopes, líder da CCP, sobre isto? Tem opinião, ou pensa que é tudo culpa de Gaspar?) This recession, in other words, wasn't causing a hiatus from consumerism: rather, it was reforming consumerism back to how it was intended to be: thoughtful, responsible and values based."
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