Thursday, April 04, 2013

The psychology of marketing to older consumers is important - but we know most of the questions and answers

I was just reading a review of our latest book, Marketing to the Ageing Consumer, in the Journal of Marketing Analytics.

It was very positive but clearly it bugged the reviewer that we didn't cover very much about the soft issues of ageing. I quote: "The fact that ageing people also have a psyche, emotions, goals, a sense of purpose and a changing feeling about the meaning of life is ignored." Thankfully, the reviewer then goes on to say: "This in itself is no criticism; on the contrary, it gives the book focus."

Maybe it hasn't come over strong enough in the book or this blog but the fact is that most of the soft issues about marketing to older people are known and well understood. My book, The 50-Plus Market, covered many of them when it was published in 2005. Since then I have blogged, written and spoken at great length about the subject. The soft/psychology issue of ageing are  done and dusted.

Most of what you read about it is re-stating the obvious or a rehash of well understood facts and competing theories.

Using my nomenclature. Ageing1.0 is all about the soft issues of marketing to older consumers. Ageing2.0 moves the debate on from this and looks at the hard facts of ageing that will determine how marketers go about their business in the years to come. Dick Stroud

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