A new breed of generation.

About less than a decade back, Malaysia was divided into 3 classes. The rich, the middle class and the have-nots. Today, as fourth generation Malaysians are popping out and growing up everywhere, we also begin to witness the birth of a fourth class. They definitely have a higher disposable income yet they're not exactly to be considered rich. They are probably stuck somewhere in between the rich and the middle class because they have everything the mid-class doesn't. Yet they don't have enough to retire at the age of 40 or truly live a jet-setting lifestyle without having to forego one or two of their designer handbags. Or gadgets. Or the few trips to that fancy mancy restaurant that charges a bomb for less-than-dynamite food quality.

“A small Lexus SUV could be a response to the urbanization of Gen Y buyers and empty-nest boomers. Toyota’s advanced product strategy group is studying a demographic trend - people who are sick of the suburbs, but who don’t want to give up the utility of their SUV. A small luxury SUV might be the right product for that environment,” says Jim Lentz, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. president - Paul Tan

So is that what they're called? Gen Y? Who finally grew up? Empty-nest boomers? Another article I read:

The teenage kids of high-achieving wealthy parents (many of whom were first-generation immigrants) are chronic spenders. These are the HAVEs of America. Many of these kids have acute Affluenza and they neither work hard, nor aspire to achieve much in life. They HAVE everything. That resources in the world are finite - is a foreign concept to these kids. They all have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and hence have to be constantly entertained which creates new opportunities for marketeers to sell them new things. The iPod is a classic success story that has done a fantastic job of tapping into this segment, and its desire for the next “cool” thing. - sramanamitra.com

That's right. That's what they're so popularly (and endearingly) called in boardrooms - the Affluents. The consumer segment that everyone wants a piece of because they have the dough to spend but are not as difficult to convince compared to luxury markets. As long as you can convince them that they're cool. So if you take a look at your local TV commercial these days, you see cool ads for shoes, for mobile phones, for mobile service providers, for perfumes, for food, for beverage, for everything. So that's what happened? All brands are suddenly 'affluent' too? Hmm. So is that how we're defined now? We're either cool? Or not? If you're cool then you have it? Come to think of it, that doesn't sound like a new concept at all. I bet that's a classic 50s story - the rich Jock gets Blondie while the poor Geek gets bullied. We're more than half a century forward now, yet we're still running on the same concept? Hmm.