Millennials at the Mall

With school back in session, the mall is eerily quiet during the day. Visit during an evening or weekend and you’ll see packs of young people browsing, shopping and socializing. Malls have long been gathering places for teenagers, but teens and twenty-somethings of today are packing a little more might. There are 84 million of them, the largest segment of the U.S. population. They're wired and check online sales before making the trip to the mall.

Generation Y spends more than previous generations of teens – over 200 billion dollars a year. In the current economy, retailers are looking to them for a boost. For more on this we’re joined by consumer research scholar Kit Yarrow. She teaches marketing and psychology at Golden Gate university. Her new book, co-written with USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell, is Gen BuY: how Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings are Revolutionizing Retail.

(Photo by Merlijn Hoek via Flickr/Creative Commons)