Think of a few famous baby boomers. Now, call to mind a few that you know. It’s probably safe to assume that none of the images that popped into your head resemble a generic brown paper bag.

Yet marketers and retailers are too often guilty of treating baby boomers as a homogeneous group with uniform attitudes and purchasing behaviors. Ironically, what they end up with is a pitch that is as generic – and disposable – as a plain brown bag.

As a group, the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 is much too large and diverse to share a single lifestyle, life stage, purchasing proclivity or political agenda. And most of them are too wealthy to be ignored by marketers and retailers obsessed by youth.

“Boomers still dominate the U.S. retail marketplace,” says Matt Thornhill, president and co-founder of the Boomer Project and co-author (with John Martin) of “Boomer Consumer.”

Boomers spend an estimated $2.3 trillion on consumer goods and services annually, yet Thornhill claims that “few retailers fully appreciate today’s older boomer consumer, instead merchandising and marketing to young, less affluent adults. Retailers that fail to acknowledge boomers today — thinking they’re past their spending prime — are limiting their success.”

In other words, those who think they know all there is to know about the baby boomer generation need to think again.

STORES partnered with the Boomer Project and BIGresearch to determine the five things retailers need to know about baby boomers. BIGresearch supplied reams of data; the Boomer Project provided the insight. Here, STORES offers some food for thought.

1. The Boomer Has Two Faces
It’s not a game of deception. The fact is that the first wave of boomers – those born between 1946 and 1954 – are very different from those born between 1955 and 1964.

Older boomers know where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot. They can recite the names of family and friends who fought in the Vietnam War and swap stories of war protests.

Younger boomers came of age in the 1970s. All but the oldest missed Vietnam, turning 18 as the last helicopters were leaving Saigon. Watergate was a watershed event, and for many, the Iranian hostage crisis was the first conflict to stir patriotic zeal and political dissent.

Think of it this way. Bob Dylan is the musical storyteller for older boomers; songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin’" are anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. For many younger boomers that mantle fell to Bruce Springsteen: they could see their own growth and maturation – from young and romantic to disillusioned-yet-hopeful – reflected back at them in his songs.

And the differences go beyond musical and historical rites of passage. For example, most older boomers are now empty nesters; only 14 percent still have someone under the age of 18 living at home, compared with 36 percent of younger boomers.

Older boomers spend leisure time traveling and gardening. Among younger boomers, hours spent on sports fields eat up chunks of free time, and even much of the balance is spent on kid-focused activities.

When it comes to shopping, labels are more important to younger boomers (44 percent) than the older segment (36 percent) – yet both cite Wal-Mart as their retailer of choice.

Boomer Project Buzz: Ignore these intra-generational differences at your own peril. Each group has a different frame of reference for decision-making, and those retailers that acknowledge the distinctions will cultivate customers and connections.

2. Single Income = Multiple Prospects
One-third of baby boomers – some 25 million people – head up single-income households. Careful, though: that doesn’t mean there’s only one person in the household, just one less person. The average number of people in a single boomer’s household is 1.7; the average among married boomers is 3.0.

Drilling into the specifics, 17 percent are divorced or separated, 3 percent are widowed, and 14 percent never married. The average age of a single boomer is 51, with the group fairly evenly split among men (48 percent) and women (52 percent).

The big difference between single boomers and their married contemporaries is household income. Married boomers bring home an average of $73,380 annually; single boomers earn 57 percent less ($41,872). But when you do the math — dividing the total household income by the number of people in the household — the per-person totals are virtually identical.

Knowing that single boomers can deliver as much revenue to a retailer as married boomers shakes up perceptions a bit. Moreover, the data shows that single boomers are much more likely than married ones not to have preferences for particular retailers. For retailers foundering in the current economic slowdown, a smart strategy would be to target these single boomers.

It turns out that the higher the “no preference” score, the lower the rate of brand preference. In categories like men’s and women’s clothing, home improvement and prescription drugs, the opportunities are significant.

Boomer Project Buzz: Start marketing and promoting your retail establishment to single-head-of-household boomers. Get creative – or steal a page from Home Depot, which recently featured a single mom in a TV campaign. Host a singles night at your store, complete with babysitting service.

3. Boomers Are Zealous About Media
They surf the ’net. They use e-mail and they instant message (IM). Some baby boomers blog, some use iPods and many have PDAs. Yet enthusiastic as they may be about embracing new media, they haven’t abandoned their “old” favorites. They still read the newspaper and listen to the radio, and research shows boomers use both old and new media to make purchasing decisions.

A whopping 95 percent watch TV, with 77 percent of their viewing occurring between 7:30 and 11 p.m. Two-thirds of boomers subscribe to cable TV, but they’re selective about what they watch; data shows they’re most likely to be tuned into Discovery Channel, A&E, the Food Network, ESPN and Fox News. They love to watch movies, police shows, documentaries and situation comedies. Reality bites for this generation; they click right past “The Bachelor,” for example.

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