By 2CV, September 2026

Same label. Different lives.

Meet Gen Z: a teenager living with her parents in Manila, a graduate starting his first office job in Singapore, an entrepreneur in Mumbai and a young mother in Jakarta. In a market research deck, they might appear to be in the same group. In real life, their incomes, responsibilities, ambitions and purchasing power could hardly be more different.

The same applies to every generation. “Boomer” might describe a retired teacher, a wealthy business owner, a grandparent providing full-time childcare or a senior executive with no intention of retiring.

Yet marketers routinely talk about these groups as though sharing a birth-year bracket also means sharing a personality. Gen Z is socially conscious and disloyal. Millennials value experiences. Gen X is practical. Boomers are wealthy but resistant to change.

These descriptions are catchy. The question is whether they are useful.

Is generational marketing as reliable as horoscopes?

Generational labels make complicated markets feel manageable. Give millions of people a name and a handful of characteristics, and they suddenly appear easier to understand, present and target.

There is some logic behind them. People who grow up during the same period can experience similar technologies, economic conditions and cultural events. Entering adulthood during a recession may affect attitudes towards money. Growing up with smartphones may shape how people communicate and discover brands. But shared context is not the same as shared identity.

Generational marketing is not astrology, but it begins to resemble it when someone’s date of birth becomes the main explanation for their values, character and buying behaviour. Are younger consumers less loyal because they belong to Gen Z or because they are young, have fewer established habits and are surrounded by more choice? Are older consumers slower to adopt a digital service because they are Boomers or because the service was not designed around their needs? Too often, age, life stage and circumstance are rolled together and presented as a generational insight.

Why is everyone chasing Gen Z?

This brings us back to marketing’s current favourite audience. Brands everywhere want to “win Gen Z”. They commission studies of Gen Z, create Gen Z personas and ask how their brand can become more relevant to Gen Z.

There are legitimate reasons for the interest. Younger consumers are entering categories, forming preferences and becoming more economically important. They can influence family purchases, introduce new products into the household and help brands appear culturally current. Their behaviour is also highly visible. They post, share, comment and participate in trends, creating a stream of signals that marketers can observe and measure. But visibility is not the same as value.

A young consumer posting about a restaurant is easy to notice. An older consumer returning every week may be worth more to the business while generating far less online noise. The audience creating the conversation may not be the audience providing the revenue.

The problem is not that marketers target Gen Z. It is that they often speak about Gen Z as though it were one person: young, urban, digitally fluent, culturally progressive and waiting to discover the right brand. That imagined individual may exist. But they cannot represent an entire generation.

Segment the need, not the birth year

The answer is not to remove generations from the marketing vocabulary. It is to stop treating them as ready-made customer segments. A generation can provide context about the world in which someone grew up. It can suggest useful questions and hypotheses. It should not be the conclusion reached before the research has begun.

Brands should start with what genuinely shapes a decision: the need being addressed, the person’s life stage, their income and financial confidence, their household role, their motivations, their category behaviour and the cultural context in which they live.

A 27-year-old and a 57-year-old may have more in common as first-time investors, new business owners or carers than either individual has with those born in their specific generation. A useful segment may cross several generations because it is built around a meaningful shared need rather than a convenient demographic label. Often, the similarities between people across generations will prove more valuable than the assumed similarities within generations.

At 2CV, this is where audience understanding earns its place: challenging the generational labels, uncovering the people hidden underneath it and identifying what genuinely shapes choice.

Because good segmentation should make consumers more distinct; not turn millions of them into the same person.

Related reading: The Future of B2B Research, also by 2CV.