The 80 million Americans born since 1977 are often called by marketing experts "Generation Y" -- or "Gen Y" for short. These young people have their own approach to buying and they way they react to advertising. They outnumber America's 77 million baby boomers, so they are also sometimes called "echo boomers." The Gen Yers are unimpressed by advertising that tries to tell them what they need. At home with the Internet, they are having a intense impact on product development and marketing. They are "media-savvy, information-saturated and self-defining." They resent and reject brands that try to define them. Instead, they want to define the brand.

Generation Y is not totally resistant to advertising. Indeed, Gen Y^ers like brands, but they demand an unprecedented level of interaction with the companies marketing to them. They want to be courted and wooed.

Their impacts on downtowns are increasingly important, if too often unnoticed. Go to downtown Hoboken, NJ, Old Pasadena, CA, South Beach in Miami, FL, or downtown Manayunk, PA on a Friday or Saturday evening and the impacts of the Gen Y crowd are obvious. They fill the bars, restaurants and movie theaters and infuse the whole commercial area with a sense of great energy and action.

The impacts of Gen Y teenagers especially go unnoticed. They have a surprising amount of spending power. In 2000, for example, the average weekly income for teens from all sources was estimated at $86.

In dense urban commercial centers, the impacts of Gen Y teenagers on local retailers can be quite profound. On a recent assignment in the Norwood section of the Bronx, for example, DANTH estimated that the nearby DeWitt Clinton High School's 4,000 students spend, overall, over $12.5 million on discretionary purchases each year. Based on research done nationally on teenagers, it is probable that the Clinton students drive another $6 million of their parents retail expenditures. A walk along Norwood's main shopping street, Jerome Avenue, at lunchtime or after school, clearly shows that these teenagers are an important market segment for most of the area's most successful retailers. Their impact is especially noticeable on the fast food operations, apparel stores, shoe stores, game and electronic shops.

On another assignment in Midtown Elizabeth, NJ, DANTH found that a Gen Y niche which included "gear" shops and shops featuring athletic equipment and recorded music to be extremely strong and the cornerstone of the shopping district's retail strength.

As can be seen in the table below, the Gen Y market segment in Midtown Elizabeth compares in strength with that of those employed in Midtown.

DANTH has fashioned retail revitalization strategies for both Midtown Elizabeth and the Jerome Avenue- East Gun Hill Road shopping district that leverage their Gen Y markets and existing Gen Y retailers.