There are just some things that Gen Y won’t pay for: news, music, banking fees, etc. Apparently, this social media savvy cohort doesn’t find a tremendous amount of value in these items or they can simply get them for free somewhere else.
This trend seems have spilled over — perhaps temporarily — to the auto industry.
In a recent study, potential Gen Y car buyers were 2.3 times more likely to buy a used car vs. a new car. (Minute 2:20 in video.)
But once I began to think about this, the only people that I know that buy gently used or secondhand stuff on a regular basis are the Gen Y crowd and late Gen X crowd (like me).
Think about this for a second…
- Who’s more likely to buy a used laptop on eBay (and maybe get a discount from Microsoft/Bing.com)? The less than 40 crowd.
- Who’s more likely to be a vulture investor and buy a gently used car at half price from the Craigslist marketplace? The less than 40 crowd.
- Who’s more willing to bypass Realtors entirely and do a housing swap without any money changing hands? The less than 40 crowd willing to do hours of research.
So it’s not surprising that the younger, more tech savvy consumers are the ones more willing to do more research online and use the Internet’s disintermediation effect to full capacity to find the best bargains. Plus, now that so many different communities (like eBay or Craigslist) are arguably the world’s largest garage sale, it’s not surprising that savvy consumers are no longer willing to pay retail price for every little thing.