Older markets and the new marketing paradigm.

CONSUMERS; MARKETING research; AGING; MARKETING strategy; RESPONSE rates; MARKETING management

The article highlights the general inattention to human development in marketing research and practice, especially in research and marketing concerned with older consumers. Marketing to older consumers largely operates against the backdrop of a grim tapestry of aging reinforced by gerontology. The marketing profession largely has not come to terms with aging in the marketplace, perhaps because many marketers have not come to terms with their own aging. It is time marketers deal with the considerable evidence that we are not completed specimens at any age. Researchers and practitioners would have a body of information to facilitate more accurate predictions of behavior and more successful campaigns. In real life situations, consumers primarily evaluate incoming information viscerally in terms of its personal implications. Less detailed and more nuanced messages allow older consumers to define a product in their own terms. This may perplex those who are accustomed to older consumers wanting more information than younger consumers.