Why am I flying to Miami during spring break? If you guessed it was to watch my children frolic in the pool at the Hotel Fountainbleau, guess again. I'm spending not quite 2 days in Miami Beach so that I can represent the Generation X shopper at SymphonyIRI Group's annual summit. I'm on a panel designed to give senior marketers a taste of the differences between shoppers of different generations. It's not entirely unlike the Mom Blogger panel I participated in 2 years ago in Las Vegas, but this time I'm even more professionally prepared. Not only as a shopper born in the mid-1970s and a mother, but because I work specifically in the shopper marketing discipline.
Since it's a panel discussion, I can't predict exactly where the conversation will go, but I'm hoping I will get a chance to talk about social shopping (everything from checking out product reviews to asking for opinions on Twitter on Facebook), category-specific paths to purchase and mobile-enabled shopping behaviors. I've also been asked to come up with Moms' Top 5 Fears. Using a pseudo-scientific blend of Leo Burnett BrandShelter research and my own survey of mom friends, I came up with the following.
1. Gas prices will go up
2. My town, city or state will raise sales, property or income taxes and fees
3. Feeling of powerlessness in the face of natural disasters, global warming, religious fundamentalism and corporate greed
4. Bullying/cyberbullying
5. Unable to save enough money for retirement and children's college educations
How do these fears align with yours? It's not too late to tell me!
How do these fears align with yours? It's not too late to tell me!
8 comments:
do you think we are more or less worried than our parents were? it does seem like we excessively worry and i always find myself wondering if it's the state of the world today, or if it's just normal adult/parenting stuff.
also...one of my biggest worries is whether or not my family is eating right and whether we are all as healthy as we could be. why won't my kids eat their vegetables?!?!
So interesting to see those top 5 worries...and how far off mine are from the norm. With so many sectors of the economy suffering, I don't spend time worrying about whether gas prices or local taxes will go up - because I just assume they have to. I worry more about whether I'm spending enough time with my kids as a working mom. Or if I'm teaching my kids how to be the right mix of compassionate and street smart.
Promise you'll post a nice primer on social shopping? I love it in concept but don't know which great sites to check out.
I would put numbers 3 and 5 on my list of top 5 mom fears. I also fear how the internet is affecting or is going to affect our children's lives--how do we protect them and/or "police" them when they're on-line?Cyberbullying is definitely a part of that.
I think my day-to-day fears are a little more specific to my family. I worry about my daughter's happiness as she gets older and deals with increasing social interactions. I worry how she'll adjust to her new school in the fall. I worry that I'm not being the best wife and mother I can be. Basically, I worry. Perhaps if I started putting these worries in a more global context and realize their place, they wouldn't seem quite as weighty.
My biggest worry as a Mom is that I'm doing it all wrong.
I agree with Vee. We just saw a clip of JFK giving the great space race speech. All the Dems clapped. All the Reps sat and stared. All I kept thinking is nothing really changes. If you go back 100 years, people were complaining about similar things. Of course, cars weren't around then so they worried about other costs. Things evolve, but the worries are related.
Post a Comment