In the comments of Chuck Schneider's last piece on marketing to millennials, many CE pros expressed difficulties working with and selling to Millennials. Schneider adds to the discussion here, by outlining the biggest roadblock to gaining clients of this generation: they haven't moved into homes of their own yet.
It’s important for the CE industry to take a brief look at where Millennials stand right now. Where are they living, and where do they ultimately want to live?
Millennials' current domestic situation was well summed up this past January by National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) assistant vice president for survey research, Rose Quint, at a seminar during the International Builders Show.
“The millennial generation is poised to make a significant impact on home design but first they have to move out of their parents’ homes and into a place of their own.”
Gallery: Millennials and the Demise of the Single Family Home
Since we slogged out of the Great Recession with frightfully minuscule GDP growth, pundits from the real estate world, among numerous others, have been wishfully predicting that “any day now” Gen Y will move into homes of their own.
There really hasn’t been much more than some relatively small fits and starts now for the greater part of a decade.
For our business to really blossom again, it better show some significant upticks soon. What we sell, install, monitor and maintain doesn’t happen in Mom’s basement or a bedroom rented apartment.
According to current thinking at the NAHB, when this bunch finally gets around to buying that first home they'll want the following:
- Separate laundry rooms
- Energy-star appliances and windows
- Exterior lighting
- Well-equipped kitchens
- Casual, comfortable living spaces, especially outdoor living rooms (what we used to call patios)
Where’s our stuff, you ask?
Oh, it’s there.
At that same January NAHB seminar, Better Homes and Gardens brand executive editor Jill Waage told the assemblage, “These Millennials want to use technology to make entertainment choices easier, monitor the comings and goings of packages, repairmen and their children, and improve their health and well-being.”
“They are comfortable with technology,” Waage continued. “After all, they are the first generation to walk into homeownership with a smartphone in their hands.”
So we’re not quite an asterisk but rather an assumption or even a given, sort of like what the dishwasher became to a home by the mid-1960s.
Somehow, we better find a way to climb our way out of this lack-of-status ditch.
If we can’t pass the outdoor living room or stackable, stainless-steel, 19-cycle clothes washer with a steamer mode as a “must-have” then we’re doomed to the standing of a low flush toilet … without the trendy Euro-bidet option.
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