Reducing customer frustrations as starting point for product development

This is an interesting article about how P&G is trying to direct its R&D spend by “overcoming shopper frustrations”.
I quote

The company looks for common concerns shared by consumers across its markets and in different segments, in order to drive global scale, he added.
'The bottom line is: Is the consumer willing to buy it?'

The company's chief technology officer said: " statistics and industry analysis must not serve as a substitute for actual customer needs in driving new product development."

I find this an interesting approach because I am becoming increasingly aware of the ‘frustrations’ of older consumers because of the youth-centric design of products and their associated sales, support and marketing processes and infrastructure.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I doubt if companies like P&G are paying enough attention to the design of products;  how they are marketed and delivered to their increasingly old customers (at least in the developed world).

 You can ignore this for only so long. Dick Stroud