All Entries Tagged With: "new cars"

Gen-Y’s Preference For Imports Spells Trouble For Domestics

There’s a great generational divide when it comes to cars.

If you’re over 30, chances are that you see automobiles as status symbols; under 30 and you’re more likely to see them as sources of air pollution. Generation Y motorists have very different transportation consumption habits than did their Baby Boomer and Generation X predecessors. According to more than a few studies and surveys, Gen Y would rather take public transportation than buy their own cars. What’s more, when gen Y does buy cars, they prefer smaller, foreign, gas-efficient vehicles like Scions, Mitsubishis and Mazdas over familiar American brands like Ford and Chevrolet.

While it’s true that “Generation Y” is really nothing more than a nickname for a large demographic born between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, and that it’s therefore silly to make generalizations about Gen Y, it’s still very interesting to talk about this group of 80 million young people because:

• Gen Y is the largest generational cluster in American history
• Gen Y is the first to “come up” during the Internet age, which is undoubtedly a major event in human history – they will probably be different than generations that have come before
• For the first time in history, marketers have numerous tools and devices they can use to measure the preferences and behaviors of an entire age group.

If the Gen Y studies are to be trusted, there’s some very bad news for Ford, GM, and Chrysler-Fiat: The members of Gen Y don’t like the so-called “domestics.”