An aging population will completely alter the marketplace for consumer products in the near and distant future. Marketing strategies that account for shifts in household size and demographic make-up will be most successful.

The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago helped propel the growth of the European Union. Today, the EU economy is bigger than the United States and is still growing. Will the EU challenge U.S. historical economic dominance on a global scale?

Marketers looking to tap into high-growth population segments should turn their attention to the U.S. Hispanic segment. But if you are waiting around for Hispanics to fully acculturate, you may be waiting a long time—perhaps indefinitely.

Throughout the world, the economic power of women is growing. As education levels are rising, incomes are following. The global middle class will at least double in the next two decades. While women in the more developed world will continue to find opportunities, developing nations will have the largest impact.

Population growth in the United States is slowing. Projections from the Nielsen Company, the Pew Research Center, and the Census Bureau all agree that year over year population growth will struggle to reach 1% for decades to come.

A likely future for the U.S. in the year 2020 and beyond is a country split between the aging Baby Boom still with substantial political, economic, and social power, and a young, fast-growing multi-cultural population with far less political and economic clout.

While the World is struggling with the economic hard times of late, the future poses a new set of challenges that do not stem from arcane financial investments, but from simple demographics. An aging population, a declining birth rate, and growing ethnic diversity will change the face and the spending behavior of consumers in the U.S. Gaining share among population groups that most marketers do not reach today—older and ethnic consumers—will require shifts in focus, tactics, and products.

ankruptcies, declining readership, falling ad dollars and the suburbanization of America have all contributed to the slow death of the great American newspaper.

Nearly 39% of U.S. households—some 44 million—are headed by a Baby Boomer. Nearly 77 million Americans fall into the cohort born between 1946 and 1964. In a couple of years, that generation will begin to reach the traditional retirement age. Given all that has happened in the economy in the last eighteen months, will they be able to afford to retire?

From 1947 to 1969, nearly 20 percent of the American population moved every year, as they relocated to new areas offering economic growth and opportunity.  Since then, mobility has steadily declined, to 15 percent in 2000, and to 11.9 percent in 2007 — a forty percent decline versus the average year between 1947 and 1969.  What has changed that has led to this decline?
First, the population of the country is getting older – and older people are less likely to move.  Second, the growing incidence of two worker couples impedes …