I was surprised to discover how many Boomers were buying my travel books, communicating to me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but of course I’ve featured Gutsy Boomers traveling the world in A Woman’s World, Gutsy Women, and my Girlfriend Getaway books.
It turns out this is part of a trend.
Last week I joined America’s leading analysts, strategists and marketing experts on “Boomer Consumers” for a summit in San Francisco, which featured top executives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Dell, Eric Taub, New York Times, ivillage.com, Vibrantnation.com, AARP, and United Airlines as speakers. There we learned that Boomers represent an emerging economy as closely watched as China, India, Brazil and Russia.
According to Google VP and Internet “co-father” Vint Cerf, the Boomer Generation is one third of the US population, holds two thirds of our nation’s financial assets, grows by one person every second–and is under-reached and largely untapped, even with $2 trillion in spending power.
“More than 100 million Americans today are age 45 or older, and the households headed by someone 40 or older account for 91% of the America’s net worth,” said Dr. Mary Furlong, CEO, Furlong & Associates, the summit producer.
“People over 50 represent the largest, fastest growing, richest consumer market on the planet.,” said Jody Holtzman, Sr. VP, AARP.
According to McKinsey Data, Boomers generate more than 40% of all disposable income and account for 50% of all consumer spending.
