It’s your first time walking into the retail store of a brand you’ve never bought from. How do staff members perceive you? What do their perceptions tell them about you?

I don’t mean how they treat you. That’s different.

I mean how they perceive you. How they perceive those attributes that provide them with clues—before they’ve even spoken with you—to the goals you have for entering their store, and to how best to interact with you to help you achieve your goals to the mutual benefit of you both.

As it turns out, we humans very rapidly notice and evaluate key attributes when we’re meeting someone for the first time. We assess a person’s perceived gender within 50 milliseconds (1/20 of a second). It seems likely that we make further judgments about their age, attractiveness, grooming, and attire within 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second). Those are vanishingly short durations to make so many judgments, but we’re wired to do so.

Starting from your perceived gender, luxury retail staff might look to research suggesting that if you’re a woman, you tend to be communal (socially oriented), so they should focus on the relationship aspect of your encounter. As a professor of fashion marketing who started her career at L’Oréal put it:

That same research also suggests that if you’re a man, you tend to be agentic (goal oriented), so they should focus on the core service—they understand you’re on a mission, they’re going to help you succeed, and they’re going to be efficient about it.

We can bundle together attractiveness, grooming, and attire into an overall category of appearance. Luxury retail employees often form their opinion of a customer based on what their appearance, and may choose whom to help and whom to avoid based on appearance.

That leaves your age. What does your age tell the staff about who you are, about your intentions, about how you’re likely to respond to various sales approaches? This is where it gets especially interesting. As it turns out, luxury retailers may infer quite a bit about you based upon the generation in which you were born—and not all of what they infer may be accurate…

Before I go any further, I want to be clear about something. In this article, I’m writing about generalizations and not stereotypes, which are two very different concepts. As the people at Aperian (I’m a fan of their work) explain:

If you’re interested in learning more about the social science concept of generations, the Wikipedia entry for the term is a good starting point. It includes a helpful visual approximation:

(By the way, if you’re looking at that graphic and thinking something is wrong with it because plenty of Boomers are still alive, don’t worry. The shaded areas indicate when the first and last members of the cohort were born, reached age 18, reached age 60, and reached age 70—not death. In fact, as of 2020, there were over 71 million Boomers living in the US.)

For this article—in fact, for this newsletter generally, when generations play a role—I’m going to focus on the four that are relevant to the luxury discussion: Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers. How does published research define them in the context of their attitudes towards luxury purchases? How might luxury retailers see them as a result? Read on.

If you’re a Boomer, you tend to hold a more traditional view of luxury in which it signifies status, achievement, and a reward for hard work. You tend to value tangible attributes like quality, craftsmanship, and durability. You often appreciate the heritage and reputation of brands and view luxury items as investments that hold their value over time. You may have a sense of “earned luxury”, or luxury as a reward for your work and achievements. You tend to be more loyal to established brands and may be skeptical of newer brands lacking heritage. You may not hunt for bargains in the luxury space as much as Millennials and GenXers. You tend to be less interested in the technological aspects of luxury and, compared to younger generations, are less motivated by sustainability.

Are you a Gen Xer? If so, you tend to take a more pragmatic and skeptical approach to luxury, with a blend of traditional values and modern sensibilities, seeking a balance between practicality and indulgence. You may display measured enthusiasm for luxury products and services. You may seek to find a balance between indulgence and practicality, balancing short-term satisfaction with long-term value. You’re more likely to research your purchases thoroughly. You’re typically comfortable with technology and use it as a tool for research and shopping, but are less interested in technological trends as younger generations. You have a growing awareness of sustainability and ethical issues, but these may not be primary drivers behind your purchases.

For those of you who are Millennials, you’re often described as tech-savvy, connected, and experience-oriented. You tend to prioritize authenticity, sustainability, and social responsibility, and are more likely to support brands that align with these values. You’re also more likely to support new and emerging brands if they align with your values, and are more likely to engage in conscious consumption, specifically seeking out brands that demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and ethical practices. You tend to value the stories that brands tell about themselves. You integrate technology into all aspects of your life and are highly active on social media, using it to discover new brands, connect with influencers, and share their experiences. You may be willing to pay a premium for products that align with your values.

If you’re a Zoomer reading this, you tend to be constantly connected, highly fluent with digital technologies, and emphasize individuality and self-expression. On the whole, you’re more diverse, open-minded, and socially conscious than previous generations. You tend to expect seamless and personalized digital experiences. You often prioritize sustainability and ethical practices over traditional luxury attributes. You tend to “like” rather than “love” luxury brands—while you may be highly loyal to luxury brands in terms of attitudes and behaviors, you don’t necessarily have strong, passionate feelings for them.

Are we nothing more than the generation to which we belong? Of course not.

We shape and are shaped by so much more—our gender, our income, our appearance—which in turn shape others’ perceptions of us. More importantly, we are shaped by our lived experiences. Even two people born in the same year, of the same gender, with similar incomes and appearance, are distinctly different individuals.

Good retail staff recognize this and seek to understand their customer as deeply as possible in the temporal and conversational spatial limits of a typical retail store interaction. (need to look up proof of this) That said, our generation is a key influence on us, and so our age is one key tool that luxury retailers use to try to understand us better.

It’s fundamental human nature to assess, in a fraction of a second, people we meet for the first time. All of us do so—including you. It would be unreasonable to expect a retail staff member to go against their biological wiring and not make an instant assessment of you when you walk into their store.

This assessment will be based on your gender, your appearance—and, yes, your age. But your gender, appearance, and age don’t define you.

A good retail staff member will seek to understand you better, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help them.

If you feel like your personality tracks well to your gender, appearance, and age—and perhaps that’s true for most of us—then you may not need to do a thing, except be yourself. But what if you don’t fit neatly into a category the salesperson is expecting to encounter?

I was at a gate at Heathrow in 2024, days before Christmas, waiting to board a flight to Edinburgh, and found myself standing next to a stylishly dressed man carrying a shopping bag from Chanel. He struck me as within a couple of years of being 60, so was a either a late Boomer or early Gen Xer—or more precisely, of Generation Jones. I struck up a conversation by looking at his bag and saying that someone was about to get a very nice gift. As it turned out, I was right—it was a Christmas gift for his sister, and it was, by his account, a very nice piece of jewelry. But I was also wrong. I assumed it was a gift because so much of Chanel’s product line is aimed at women, but it turned out he often purchased Chanel for himself as well. And it was only then that I noticed his own Chanel handbag sitting atop his carry-on—and when he put it over his shoulder a few minutes later, he was rocking it. We talked about luxury fashion, and it turned out his big goal for the coming year was to fulfill a long-time goal and buy himself a handbag from Hermès.

My assumption was my mistake. But it was a mistake easily—and, I imagine, quite often—made. Did he fit a category of people likely to buy luxury fashion? Yes, but it wasn’t a category that I was thinking of when I started talking with him.

Luxury staff will initially perceive you as they do, and your ability to change that may be limited. But you can help them once you’ve met. Share your goals for visiting their store, your luxury preferences, and let your personality come across clearly. They may not “get” you at first glance. Our ultra-fast categorization skills can often be wrong (as were mine in the airport). But we can correct our perceptions based on actual data. With any luck—and with a little help from you—your salesperson may well do so.

And if not? That’s a good reason to keep looking until you find the salesperson who fits you.

Do you believe luxury salespeople perceive you accurately when you walk in a boutique for the first time?

What’s the worst experience you’ve ever had in a luxury boutique? What led to it?