Marketing has long rested on the use of market segmentation. While birth age has been a useful way to create groups, it describes segments but in itself does not help to understand segment motivations. Environmental events experienced during one's coming-of-age years, however, create values that remain relatively unchanged throughout one's life. Such values provide a common bond for those in that age group, or cohort. Segmenting by 'coming-ofage' age provides a richer segmentation approach than birth age. This approach, known to work in America, is used in this paper to create generational cohorts in Russia and in Brazil.

A new generational cohort is emerging from the Millennial market segment as a result of cataclysmic events that have occurred since 2008. Interviews with college upperclassmen in the United States identified significant events influencing their values, the values arising from these events, and new values not associated with older Millennials. The most important events identified included the Great Recession, 9/11, and the election of the first African-American president. Values of Millennials were assessed in online surveys of college juniors and seniors in the United States in the fall of 2009 and 2010 and among older Millennials, aged 27-31, during the summer of 2010. The values most strongly differentiating the younger and older Millennials were "piety" and "thrift." Younger Millennials in the United States are less thrifty and more secular and sexually permissive than older Millennials. They are also less patriotic and less concerned about politics, sustainability, saving, and making mistakes in life. This suggests a splintering of the Millennials cohort as a result of the Great Recession and the potential emergence of a younger "entitlement" cohort. It also suggests further investigation of cross-national value shifts among younger Millennials, prompted by the Great Recession.

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The values of coming-of-age millennials in the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand were studied to determine if their values are similar, thus enabling marketers to stress the same values panculturally. While similarities were found on some value dimensions, many differences were noted as well. U.S. and Swedish millennials were most different from one another while New Zealand millennials were more similar to U.S. respondents than Swedes, a finding consistent with Hofstede's model of cultural values. The findings support the need to understand cohort-based values and cultural values in designing a marketing strategy targeting millennials across cultures.