LilBob

The Future of U.S. Consumer Spending: It's a Generational Thing

I agree with you wholeheartedly that one needs to examine one's primary demographic group and aim advertising and product lines accordingly, but I question your list of businesses as you appear to have half of the list spot on and the other half dead wrong.

4 of the 8 businesses you mention are purveyors of goods and or services that are either of poor quality, or in outrageously competitive markets. Aeropostale doesn't have a chance in an age when more consumers are looking for the "Made in America" tag and quality of products is a growing issue. Chipotle Mexican Grill-that's just a big loser right there, the food in their stores is just plain awful (and I do know food, I was a prep cook in some pretty nice restaurants during my college years). Boston Beer Company-a lot of people do like Sam Addams but there's tremendous competition in Micro-Brews and Sam Addams has lost some of it's microbrew credibility by becoming too omnipresent. Pac Sun-they had stores in the malls near where I live, both of those stores are closed now. The items they carried were very highly priced, and suited to the fashion sense of a suburbanite hip-hop fan with significantly less than average intelligence.

After trashing half of your list I'll do a mitzvah by naming a sector to watch: craft goods suppliers. Gen-Y-for some strange reason I don't really understand-seems to be full of young people who love to do crafts: knitting, scrap-booking, watercolors, etc. Stores like Michael's and Joann Fabrics are likely to enjoy growing sales as the buying power of Gen-Y increases.

Amazon's Performance Leaves Wal-Mart in the Dust

I think where Amazon really shines is in their distribution structure as it pertains to an aging baby-boomer population. In what seems to me an ironic twist, it appears that Baby Boomers are just as savvy as teens when it comes to Internet shopping-while Gen-X-ers tend to be more traditional-preferring brick and mortar stores like their grandparents shopped at. What this means is that as the Baby Boomers reach their Autumn years and face the difficulties with mobility that aging brings a well established online retail brand is an incredibly valuable asset. As the collective knees of America's wealthiest demographic start getting sore those enormous Wal-Mart parking lots are looking much less attractive.