The Net Generation has grown up with an ever expanding choice of products and services that results from the availability of products that the internet provides to consumers everywhere.  So they can buy a funky tee shirt from Des Moines, or a $300 designer brand few have heard of from Florence, Italy all from their desk top…even their phone.

If the Net Generation wants it, they Google it.  If your store doesn’t show up, too bad.   It’s easy for this kind of thinking to keep you up at night.

Here’s a generation that on the one hand has taken “belonging” to an entirely different level with thousands and thousands of social networks, yet expresses a need for extreme individualism when it comes to product choice.  They customize thier iPod, skin their Dell and trick out their Mazda to express themselves in ways only they can.

In the end, despite all the prognostication, Net Gen gravitates toward hub brands.  The iPod and iPhone still reigns supreme, they still watch American Idol despite having 200 channels to choose from and yet they may buy a download from a band so obscure that the band doesn’t even know its name.

As a marketer to the Net Generation, you have a choice.  Be a hub brand, or find away to prosper being an obscurity.  Both are possible.  Both fit with freedom of choice.  Pick your strategy and execute it flawlessly and you’ll do fine.