Four Mexican dreams: What will drive the Mexican millennial to invest?

Abstract

The American Dream is a well-researched concept, but what would be its equivalent for Mexico? We investigate the Mexican Dream for young adults (25 to 35year old Mexicans). The aim of the study is to develop an understanding of the core values of young Mexican adults reflected in their consumer behavior in the financial sector. We implement a cross-cultural consumer behavior framework by David Luna, in order to consider factors like culture, and value systems to uncover the Mexican Dream for young Mexican adults. In order to gather data for this study, six focus group discussions of key informants were carried out in specific areas, such as consumer behavior, futures images and Mexican culture among others. The results suggest that the core drivers of the Mexican Young adults, known as Generation Y, differ from the traditional cultural values in several ways. The results are used to create four images of the future in order to understand the young Mexican adults core drivers for the future: 1) Following the North Americans image describes a future based on the traditional Mexican values updated with a modern twist; 2) The Muddling Through image describes a future where the most important aspects of life go wrong; 3) the Telenovela combines positive and negative aspects in an image of the future; and 4) the Going European image strives for a civilized individualism within a welfare state.