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New York, NY—As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed, the rich have always been different from the rest of society. But as a recent article in Forbes points out, today’s rich are different even from the rich of just one generation ago. While prior generations of affluent consumers were well traveled, thanks to technology, today’s richest consumers enjoy a global connectedness that eclipses the sophistication and poise of their forebears.

Mark Miller, chief strategy officer at Team One, a Los Angeles-based advertising agency that introduced the Lexus brand and created campaigns for the Ritz-Carlton and other luxury brands, is the author of the Forbes article. He identifies five core values that unite affluent consumers around the world. These are mobility, success, status, belonging, and consumption.

While on the surface they may seem identical to the core values rich people always had, there are some subtle, but key, differences that unite what Miller calls a "Global Affluent Tribe." These consumers are defined far more by what they love than where they live. Mobility, for example, means not just upward but also outward: being at home wherever you are. For today’s affluent, success is defined more by what they create than what they acquire, he says, and status symbols also have moved away from iconic objects and toward rare experiences they can always remember and talk about with peers.

To previous generations, “belonging” usually implied something local, such as membership to an exclusive country club. To today’s global affluent tribe, it can mean anything from digital membership to a global concierge service that caters to a worldwide audience.

Finally, consumption patterns have shifted from simply acquiring expensive objects for their own sake, to carefully selecting and choosing objects of high value, not just high price. Today, affluent consumers demand justification for the expenditure before they will put forth their wallet.

Read the full article here.

Top image: AccurateLeads.com