How green are you? : a study on Baby Boomers and Generation Y

Abstract: Sustainability has been an important and discussed issue during the last decades. Sustainability has been defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This concern for the environment includes both the business world as well as individuals. As the green market continues growing, and in order to keep up with consumers’ new wants and needs firms may have to adjust their marketing strategies to them. Marketing practice has taken a new approach towards sustainability and many organizations have started to implement sustainable marketing. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate Baby Boomers and Generation Y values towards sustainability and if they act in accordance to their own values. Furthermore, the results and the analysis will help to find if there are any similarities or differences between these generations and their values towards sustainability and sustainable consumption. Previous researches have been focused on sustainability, consumer behavior, and only a few of them included the study of a generation. However, there are not any currently researches in academic literature that includes both generations and their values towards sustainability. This study is based on a qualitative research on Baby Boomers and Generation Y. Two focus groups have been conducted in order to get a deeper understanding of these generations’ values towards sustainability. However, it is important to point out that it is not possible to draw general conclusions from the results. The results show that there are common values and differences between the generations. This thesis has laid a good foundation for possible future research about the generations and sustainability. The results from the study may be of some valuable for Swedish retail businesses and sustainable/organic products manufactures. Moreover, it could help marketers to adapt their marketing strategies to suit these generation’s needs.