As a millennial, I do not think I can go a full day without hearing on the radio, on TV, or on some form of social media about how millennials are killing "X" business. For example, a recent tweet I said blamed millennials for killing restaurants such as Buffalo Wild Wings (last time I checked, every BDubs that I've been to has been doing just fine?). But, this is not the only case. In fact, it's even a common Google search:
Millennials are constantly being blamed for jewelers going out of business, car dealerships failing, restaurants not being as popular, and basically any kind of decline in a business or product. But recently, I saw a tweet that kind of made me say "EXACTLY!" This was the tweet:
Why are the titles of these stupid articles always "Millennials killed this Brand X" and not "Brand X totally sucks at adapting"
— Der-shing Helmer (@shingworks) June 4, 2017
One thing some businesses are not understanding, is that an entire new generation is now standing up as a whole and taking power. The Millennial Generation are people 13-34(some people also extend this to people aged 37 as well), so this means that every person in the millennial generation is now a legal adult. The two other big generations in power, Baby Boomers and Generation X, currently have no idea how to handle this. It's been a while since the Baby Boomers have noticed another generation coming to power, and Gen X has never experienced this kind of situation before. So, both of the other generations are kind of confused on how to deal with another generation coming to power (and instead of accepting and adapting to it... they usually stoop to just making fun of millennials on the Internet - which some of them may even do in the comments section on this article).
So, as Millennials are now having a stronger grip on how society works, we are noticing some businesses decline: these are usually businesses that charge a lot of money for their products (i.e. expensive jewelers, expensive car dealerships, expensive realtors). So naturally, the two older generations want to blame someone for their businesses beginning to fail. Who is the easiest scapegoat? Millennials.
So maybe instead of ranting on Facebook about how angry you are that millennials are ruining your business and letting it fail, maybe you should start looking into how to adapt your business to the interest of a millennial. Millennials are an entirely different generation; they do not want to do everything the same as Baby Boomers or Generation Xers. Do not ignore us anymore, we now have the power to ruin your business if you do not adapt.
So no, Millennials aren't killing your business... you let it die.
