Backpackers: The next generation? - Scholarly Commons Home

Backpackers: The next generation?
characterised as cautious, indifferent, lacking in imagination and adventure,
frugal and price conscious.
The silent generation are the parents of today’s baby boomers, a generational cohort
born between 1946 and 1964 of considerably different psychographic makeup
than their elders. Today, people in their mid 50s were born in an era of optimism
and growth. Boomers are characterised by a “quest for self”, a strong
commitment to individual conscience over duty to community (Pennington-
Gray et al., 2003, p. 344). While many scholars have noted that people in the age
bracket of 50 years and older group are becoming more healthy, more active,
more financially independent, few have used these age cohorts to explain the
generational differences (Patterson, 2006).
However, a few researchers have recognised this anomaly, and have been
writing of the coming of an “ageless” market or “age neutral” market
(Dychtwald, 2005; Schiffman & Sherman, 1991). Dychtwald (1999) suggests that
adults of all ages agree that people are not perceived to be old today until age 75.
Perhaps the largest scale, and most contemporary, travel study comparing
income and assets to the effects of age, researched between 2000-2002 of 33,576
US respondents, states that “the younger Seniors (those aged 55-74) have the
same pattern of vacationing as those 35-54 years of age” (Peterson, 2007, p. 40).
However, Alreck (2000, p. 904) disputes these findings, citing an age roles study
she first conducted in 1980, and repeated in 1997, that finds no appreciable
difference in age role norms between 1980 and 1997.
Significantly, many scholars agree that cognitive age – how old one feels – is a
better indicator of life-satisfaction and attitudes (Barak & Schiffman, 1991;
Mochis, 1996, 2003; Schiffman & Sherman, 1991). Peoples’ perceptions of their
age influence their behaviour. Mathur, Sherman and Schiffman (1998, p. 272),
referring to the cognitively young as the “new age elderly”, note that “the
difference between chronological age and cognitive age for new-age elderly was
almost 12 years compared to those [of the traditional elderly]”. Cleaver and
Muller (2002) found that the difference was 10.2 years and that this increased as
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