Millennials Are About to Reshape Retail. Here's How
They get a bad rap -- and perhaps some of it is deserved. Broadly speaking, though, most millennials aren't self-entitled, lazy, spendthrift, or impossible to manage on the job. Instead, by and large, they're hardworking, realistic about money matters, and a lot more like previous generations than boomers and Gen Xers might want to admit. More importantly, they now outnumber baby boomers, and a whole lot of them are about to start having kids of their own.
That's a recipe for a sweeping shift in this country's consumer culture. As investment advisor Bill Smead told CNBC this month, the advent of true adulthood -- and parenthood -- for this segment of the U.S. population will cause them to start foregoing "Apple devices, craft beer, and Chipotle burritos" and instead limit themselves to what he called "necessity spending."
The definition of "necessity" is still up for grabs, though it's not difficult to generalize. It's also not difficult to guess which companies are best positioned to win major shares of millennials' $600 billion in redirected annual spending. Though many may have shunned the likes of Walmart (NYSE: WMT) or steered clear of bargain houses like Ross Stores, they're starting to appreciate those price-pragmatic options.
Source Fool.com
