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Executive Summary
The objective of this exploratory qualitative study is to better understand how the expansion of identity alternatives available to women coming of age in postindustrial societies in the 21st century will influence their needs and behaviors in the marketplace. Consumer culture theoretics and identity theory provide a framework for examining interview data collected from early career professional women in two countries: the United States and Poland.
Despite differences in socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, key commonalities regarding the challenge of pursuing professional and personal goals and objectives are observed in the self-reported experiences of women in both countries. It is concluded that the expansion of identity alternatives creates both opportunities and challenges for professional Millennial women that have implications for consumer wellbeing and service providers. Directions for future research and insights for marketers, particularly service providers, are discussed.
Introduction
As more than 40 million Millennial women in the United States, born in the 1980s or 1990s, begin to transition into their 30s (Prosumer Report, 2010; U.S. Census 2010), it remains unclear how the growing influence and buying power of this new generation of women will impact the marketplace. This uncertainty is compounded by the lack of cultural agreement regarding roles and responsibilities of educated professional woman regarding work, family and personal development.
In the U.S., for example, full-time motherhood is perceived by some to be an antidote for social ills, while doting "hover or helicopter" parents are at once blamed for raising a generation of entitled American youth (e.g., Tyler, 2007) and praised for helping students to be more successful (Aucoin, 2009). Even the popular notion of work-life balance is under fire as an emerging group of highly successful working mothers characterize early career sacrifices to prepare for future family responsibilities to be self-sabotage (CassensWeiss, 2011) and a betrayal of the women's movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Sandberg, 2011).
This shifting cultural landscape comes at a time that women across the globe are becoming more educated and finding greater opportunity to be financially independent, compared to their mothers and grandmothers, than anytime in recent history (see Figure 1).
Even in countries like Poland, where it was taken for granted that women would work outside the home in the latter part...