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Mining for Gold in 'Silver Markets'
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10911 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
1,485 Words |
| Author
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David B. Wolfe
David B. Wolfe is author of Serving the Ageless Market (McGraw-
Hill, 1990), re-released in paperback in 1992 as Marketing to
Boomers and Beyond. He also heads Wolfe Resources Group in
Reston, Virginia, a consultancy specializing in middle-age and
older markets. |
Companies across the nation are gearing up for the gold in the "silver" markets of an aging America. But will they find the mother lode that they are spending millions trying to unearth?
Long infatuated with youth markets, many of America's businesses are seeing that youth and young adult markets are shrinking after two decades of negative growth birth rates, and they are eying older markets as replacements. But achieving success in older markets is shaping up to be a tougher undertaking than most companies anticipated.
Marketers are finding that they are like tourists in a foreign country who don't know the language. James Weil, head of Metropolitan Life's long-term care insurance division, says, "Some succeed and some fail in marketing to older consumers, but one thing everyone has in common is that no one knows the reasons for the results he or she gets."
One of the first lessons marketers new to older markets learn is that associating a product with age can spell disaster for a marketing campaign. Marketers are also learning that discounts are not the powerful inducements in older markets that they have long been assumed to be.
Most of what marketers believe and practice has come from experience in younger markets. But much of what works in younger markets leads to blowouts in older markets. Older minds don't work like younger minds. Younger minds tend to be objective--that is, they tend to receive cues for much of their behavior from sources (especially peers) in the external world. In contrast, older minds tend to be more subjective, taking cues for much of their behavior from their inner psyches.
Objectively minded younger consumers are heavily influenced by their need to socially integrate. Without social acceptance, young people find that a life partner, career advancements, and rising social status can prove elusive. But at the onset of middle age--about age 40--people tend to being taking fewer behavior cues from the external world, becoming more introspective and increasingly detached from the influence of peers. This results in progressively greater individualism in older people.
Most new middle-agers feel these changes coming on when they begin asking themselves, "What is my purpose in life?" "Is this all there is?" and "Where am I going?" These crucial questions mark a transition from dominance by the outer world
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