Why this emerging and lucrative demographic is finally spending money on itself.
[manyworld] Marketers continue acting the same way they have for three decades, in that they focus their products and advertising on youth and young families. They pay far less attention to middle-aged and older consumers. This behavior, the authors point out, is especially peculiar today, “when the 50-plus generation is the heralded baby boomers — responsible for more than 40 percent of retail spending in the U.S. and western Europe.” In this article, they consider the reasons why marketers have failed to seize the 50+ opportunity, summarize five recent findings about the characteristics peculiar to today’s mature consumer, and offer some suggestions for marketing organizations to change in the right direction.
The authors locate a major part of the problem in marketing assumptions. It has become an article of faith that mature consumers are brand loyal and resistant to change. Marketers know that boomers have money to spend, but don’t see that “this audience is ready for new experiences and solutions” now that their children are grown, debts cleared (in some cases), inheritances collected, and their professional maturity achieved.
Among the characteristics the authors attribute to mature consumers of today are the following: As people age, they need products that help them stay engaged. Middle-aged and older people need customized communications. Mature consumers demand brands that fit, rather than define, their personalities. Health, wealth, and lifestyles diverge with age. They may all be aging, but their attitudes are defined in part by their generations—the World War II generation differ from the first wave of baby boomers.
Very few companies, in the authors’ minds, have effectively integrated these insights into their marketing campaigns. Among those are Fidelity Investments and L’Oreal SA’s Plenitude line. The far larger number of companies that fall short should begin by shaking up the culture of the marketing organization to bring in entirely new skills. Companies would benefit by slowing the turnover of marketers, instead letting them “age with their customer base, following consumers like their brands through life stages and changing the message as their customers age so that the products reflect the fundamental values of the older generation.” Although marketers like to believe that they are hip to change, the authors see their business structure as highly conventional and unable to adapt easily to new ideas, and their minds as stuck in a time of the dominance of network TV and youthful consumers.