Why does Generation Y love luxury brands

Recently answered this HARO inquiry by a student for an article on "Irrational Spending in Generation Y" for her NYU Journalism Class:

"My article is about how Generation Y spends money with false rationales. What are the psychological and sociological reasons for spending on luxury goods when there are loans to pay? What influence do advertising and pop culture play in the demand for luxury goods?"

MY RESPONSE:
Ah, Generation Y, lovingly referred to in marketing circles as “Generation Why” or “Generation Why Not”.

Why does Generation Y spend money with false rationale? Why they’re not “false rationale” at all! The U.S. today is full of example after example of bail-outs. Gen Y has been raised with “helicopter” parents who protect from every harm and admonish nay-sayers that their child is NOT at fault for anything they do, federal bail-outs including those on the scale of Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae, the mortgage industry (I could go on ad infinitum and ad nauseum) where managers walk away with their heads held high and millions in their pockets, bankruptcy protection rates soaring again. You get the point.

So, if a Gen Y’er can’t lose, why not spend like there’s no tomorrow. In their frame of reference, there IS only today. Modern culture for young Gen Y’ers has also included U.S. participation in war after war and terrorism-you-can-touch brought to American soil. So, there may not be a “tomorrow”, either. A very different "feel" from the Cold War of the baby boomer's generation.


What part does advertising and pop culture play in the demand for luxury goods? Manufacturers and retailers are in business to make a profit. Period. And, advertising’s goal is to encourage more sales to make those businesses more profit by playing to the attributes of the target market. And, play to them, they do. Gen Y’ers are really being “played”. Advertisers are pushing ever more expensive must-have items. Imaginative brain-teasing toys and games, or even create-your-own fun games, have been replaced with follow-the-leader computer games and virtual worlds.

Pop culture is fraught with celebra-mania. Gen Y’ers see how easy – and “fulfilling” – it is to be a celebrity. Celebs represent the “good life”, lots of stuff and doing nothing more than smiling at a camera to get it.

Gen Y was raised amidst the explosion of instant communication and, thus, instant gratification. Just look at the anecdotal evidence, such as the explosive rise of social media and alternative newspapers where articles are reduced to no more than sound bites themselves and we communicate in 3 minute or less video vignettes.


A better question may be: what would Gen Y do without electricity?

Good source: the folks at Iconoculture.com.