America’s Stressed Out. Here’s How You Can Help (and Profit)

By Rieva Lesonsky

When you think of “stressed-out” consumers, do you picture a frazzled CEO rushing from meeting to meeting while answering emails on one smartphone and holding a conversation on another? Well, you might need to refresh your visual to include a stressed-out teenager. That’s right: According to a new study from the American Psychological Association (APA), younger people are more likely than older ones to report high stress levels.

The study, Stress in America, found that while Americans of all ages report higher stress than they think is good for them, Millennials (ages 18 to 33) and Gen Xers (ages 34 to 47) reported the highest average stress levels.

On a 10-point scale where 1 is “little or no stress” and 10 is “a great deal of stress,” both Millennials and Gen Xers report an average stress level of 5.4. That’s much higher than Boomers’ (age 48 to 66) average stress level of 4.7 and Matures’ (age 67-plus) average stress level of 3.7.

Of course, you can’t avoid stress entirely, so the study asked respondents how much stress they felt was healthy, then measured the difference between what they saw as “healthy stress” and what they actually experienced. Younger generations had a bigger gap: The difference between Millennials’ stress levels and their perception of healthy stress was 1.4 points, compared with 1.6 points for Gen X, 1.3 points for Bommers and 0.7 points for Matures.

Stress is on the rise for everyone: Thirty-nine percent of Millennials say their stress has increased in the last year, as do 36 percent of Gen Xers, 33 percent of Boomers and 29 percent of Matures. But what’s stressing us out differs from generation to generation. Not surprisingly, work, money and job stability are the biggest sources of stress for Millennials and Gen Xers, while health issues affecting themselves and family members are the biggest stressors for Boomers and Matures.

In the past five years, a majority of all age groups have tried to reduce their stress, but while Boomers and Matures are succeeding fairly well at doing this, 25 percent of Millennials and Gen Xers admit they are falling short. They’re also more likely to use unhealthy behaviors, such as drinking, smoking or overeating, to manage stress. Interestingly for businesses, 19 percent of Millennials and 13 percent of Gen X said they shop to manage stress.

What does this trend mean to you?

• A marketing message emphasizing how your product or service can lessen stress, help manage stress, or be a well-deserved reward for a stressful day will resonate with all age groups.
• However, be aware of the different types of stress affecting different age groups. Work-related stress is a hot button for younger consumers, while health and wellness are trigger issues for older ones.
• Make sure your customer service creates less, not more, stress for your clients. If buying from you is easy and pleasant, they’ll come back again and again.

Image by Flickr user BLW Photography  (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 18th, 2013 at 6:00 am and is filed under Generational Marketing, Marketing, sales process, Small Business, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.