McKinsey recently collaborated with Box1824, a research agency specializing in consumer trends, to conduct a survey investigating the behaviors of this new generation and its influence on consumption patterns in Brazil.

In Brazil, Gen Z already makes up 20 percent of the country’s population. Young people have become a potent influence on people of all ages and incomes, as well as on the way those people consume and relate to brands. That context has produced a hypercognitive generation very comfortable with collecting and cross-referencing many sources of information and with integrating virtual and offline experiences.Īs global connectivity soars, generational shifts could come to play a more important role in setting behavior than socioeconomic differences do. Members of Gen Z-loosely, people born from 1995 to 2010-are true digital natives: from earliest youth, they have been exposed to the internet, to social networks, and to mobile systems. Now a new generation of influencers has come on the scene. Long before the term “influencer” was coined, young people played that social role by creating and interpreting trends.