Millennials. Five years ago when the term began to infiltrate PowerPoint slides at retail conferences it usually elicited a glazed-over look akin to that triggered by other (at the time) mumbo-jumbo-esque terms like digital native, mindfulness and quinoa (say keen-wa).Now everyone from booze maker Diageo to South Korea-based electronics giant Samsung is honing marketing prowess to capture the attention (and spending power) of the mid-teen to mid-30s consumer bloc. They (and when I say they, I mean we) work, interact and shop differently.And this divergent set of behaviours has effectively reshaped the retail space. Research reports about millennials, and how companies can harness and take advantage of Generation Y’s purchasing power, are like a rash.They’re everywhere — you will not find a consultancy that hasn’t put one out. Convention and tradition be damned, companies have increasingly been tying their marketing strategies to the generation’s egalitarian values and are spending b...
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