Why generational research produces contradictions
Editor's note: David Intrator is chief meaning officer at RTi Research. He has over 30 years of experience working on both the creative and strategic sides of the communications business and now helps RTi turn data into meaningful narratives. Find Intrator on LinkedIn.
Marketing often runs on broad generational categories. We ask how Millennials differ from Gen X, what makes Gen Z unique, how to reach Baby Boomers. Strategies are built around these distinctions. Budgets are allocated accordingly. Retail decisions are made based on generational preferences.
It's an appealing framework. After all, birth cohorts are easy to identify, intuitive to discuss and give marketers clear targets. When you can say "Gen Z shops this way" or "Millennials value that," you believe you have something actionable.
But when you look closely at the research, the framework starts to break down. The more studies you examine, the more contradictions appear. And those contradictions reveal something important:
The generation to which one belongs might actually be one of the weakest predictors of consumer behavior.
When generational research contradicts itself
Take Gen Z as an example. They're often described as digital natives who rarely shop in physical stores. Yet multiple studies, from Deloitte to ICSC to L.E.K. Consulting, show them shopping in stores at surprisingly high rates. And J.P. Morgan's analysis of actual holiday transactions found that over half of Gen Z's spending occurred through omnichannel experiences that included in-store shopping.
Conventional wisdom also understands Gen Z as brand-agnostic, price-driven shoppers. Yet Deloitte found that Gen Z and Millennials buy name brands at higher rates than older generations.
But it’s not that simple. Morning Consult found Gen Z gives brands lower favorability ratings than Millennials, and SAP Emarsys reported that nearly half have abandoned brands because they grew "bored."
So, these “brand-agnostic,” “price-driven” shoppers actually buy more name brands than other generations, yet they trust them less and leave them faster. This suggests that the Gen Z cohort includes multiple, independent behavioral segments.
And finally, they're positioned as environmental leaders. But research from Global Web Index found Gen Z's environmental attitudes are in line with other generations. If Gen Z was driving a sustainability revolution, you'd expect them to stand apart from other age groups. The data shows they don't. This implies that environmental consciousness is a cultural shift happening across generations, not a Gen Z-specific phenomenon.
So, which is it? Digital-only or omnichannel? Brand loyal or brand agnostic? Environmental leaders or just average?
Understanding cross-generational behavior patterns
The answer is they're all these things.
”Gen Z" isn't actually a coherent behavioral segment. It's a demographic category, which means that (today) it includes college students and established professionals, people living paycheck to paycheck and people with substantial disposable income, individuals who are extensive researchers and those who are impulse buyers.
Within-generation differences often matter more than between-generation differences. Put another way: cross-generational behavioral patterns often reveal more about consumer behavior than age-based categories do. A Gen Z consumer who researches extensively before buying has more in common with a Millennial who does the same than they do with the Gen Z impulse buyer. The environmentally conscious Gen X consumer and the environmentally conscious Gen Z consumer may respond to similar messaging, despite being separated by decades.
This explains why generational research produces contradictions. We're treating birth year as the primary organizing variable when it's actually one of many factors shaping behavior, and rarely the strongest predictor.
What better segmentation looks like
So, what would replace generational categories? The goal isn't to abandon age as a variable entirely. It's to treat it as one factor among many rather than the default framework.
Start with decision-making style. Some consumers research extensively before buying. Others look for good-enough options and move on quickly. Still others delegate decisions to influencers or trusted brands. These patterns cut across generations and predict channel usage, brand loyalty and response to messaging far better than birth year. This explains why Gen Z appears both "impulsive" and "over-researching" in different studies. Those are different behavioral cohorts within the same age band.
Consider value activation. Everyone claims to care about sustainability and authenticity in surveys. But those values activate differently depending on context, category and individual circumstance. Some consumers apply these criteria across most purchases. Others only in specific categories. Understanding when and why values activate matters more than knowing someone states a preference.
Look at life structure, not just life stage. A 24-year-old freelancer and a 42-year-old gig worker may behave more similarly than two 24-year-olds when one has income stability and the other doesn't. Financial flexibility, schedule control and income volatility shape decisions more powerfully than demographic categories suggest.
The contradictions appear across all research methods. Survey data shows Gen Z saying one thing while purchase data shows them doing another. But here's what matters: Both types of data reveal the same fundamental problem. Whether you're looking at stated preferences or actual behavior, organizing by generation produces inconsistent patterns.
The issue isn't the research methodology. It's the organizing framework.
And it means recognizing that concepts like "authenticity" and "brand loyalty" carry different meanings in different contexts. These aren't single variables to measure once and apply broadly. They're constructs, and the meanings shift depending on category, circumstance, emotional disposition and individual experience.
Say goodbye to demographic shortcuts in research
The work isn't easy. Generational categories offer simplicity and clear talking points. Behavioral and attitudinal segmentation requires more nuance, more data and more willingness to let go of convenient narratives.
But the contradictions in generational research aren't going away. They're telling us something important: The stories we tell ourselves about young consumers, or any age-based consumer group, may have less to do with who they actually are and more to do with the limits of our framework.
Maybe what we're seeing isn't a generation gap at all. Maybe it's a research gap – the distance between demographic shortcuts and actual behavioral and attitudinal patterns. The value isn't in abandoning generational insights entirely. Age and life stage still matter. The value is in recognizing when cross-generational behavioral and attitudinal segments tell us more than age bands do. Closing that gap means moving beyond classifications that describe behavior and toward frameworks that reveal what's driving it.