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IF YOU ARE LOOKING TO INCREASE MARKET
SHARE . . .
LOOK AT HOW WELL YOU UNDERSTAND AGING MARKETS.
--by James J. Gilmartin
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If you are interested in securing a competitive edge for your timeshare facility in baby
boomer and older consumer markets, you will be more successful in your efforts if you understand your market. So
what's new ... you might ask? Market Research-101 tells us that! What more do I need to know about the aging baby
boomer and older consumer that's not been included in typical marketing and sales seminars and literature? What's
so different about people as they age that warrants further consideration? The answer to both questions is -- plenty!
Several years ago, author Ken Dychtwald in his book "Age Wave," predicted that the number and power of
aging customers, will drastically change many of our business assumptions. We will have to actively consider what
it means to be a maturing consumer, and how we develop, produce and distribute services for these growing populations.
When I refer to maturing consumers in this article I am referring to baby boomers and older consumers. I consider
younger adults to be 18 to 38.
Why Are Maturing Consumers Important
To reiterate some facts associated with a dramatic phenomena -- the unprecedented growth of the maturing consumer
markets -- consider that members of the 50+ population in America:
- Represent more than 35% of the total adult population (that's more than 72 million).
- Is estimated to be over 112 million by 2010 (That's almost a 50% increase, while the under 50 market will grow
by approximately 1%!).
- Have more discretionary income (wealth) than any other age group
- Control 70% of the total net worth of American households -- $8 trillion of wealth
- Own 80% of all money in savings and loan associations
- Purchase approximately 43% of all domestic cars and 48% of all luxury cars
- Purchase 80% of all luxury travel
- Purchase more than 25% of all the toys sold
- Purchase approximately 25% of all alcoholic beverages
- Spend more in the drugstore than any other age group
- Spend more disproportionately to their numbers
- Are not fanatically loyal to brands (or companies)
- Spend more on health and personal care products than any other age group
- Purchase 37% of all over the counter medicine and 37% of all spa memberships
- Spend more per person in the grocery store than any other age group
- Watch television more than any other age group
- Read newspapers more than any other age group
- Spend more an quality children's clothing than any other age group, and
- ACCOUNT FOR A DRAMATIC 40% OF TOTAL CONSUMER DEMAND.
Gerontologists tell us that as we mature we are subject to a process of change that effects us all psychologically
and behaviorally. In addition, over time, our five senses generally deteriorate, and a measurable loss of strength
and manual dexterity becomes noticeable. Understanding the implications of these changes to sales practices and
service delivery will separate the successful company from the unsuccessful company. In addition, according to
noted behaviorist Abraham Maslow as we age we also develop:
- A superior perception of reality
- Less interest in material things and more interest in things that lead to experiences
- Increased acceptance of self, others and nature
- Increased wisdom
- Higher capacity for humor
- Increased spontaneity
- Increased resistance to hyperbole
- Greater freshness of appreciation
- Increased appreciation for friendships
- Increased desire to do for others
- Increased sense of fair play and fairness
- Increased creativity, and
- Changes in our value system
Understanding these changes and applying your knowledge to your marketing and sales efforts can lead to increased
sales, more responsive services and improved market share. Unless you are aware of the implications of an aging
population to your company, your efforts to increase market share may be counterproductive.
How do They Think
David B. Wolfe, noted expert on developmental relationship marketing and communicating with maturing consumers
offers this insight. Maturing consumers rely more on emotional reactions than younger adults to determine if they
should think about a matter. Memories are activated by emotional triggers in the brain. Experiences arm many of
these triggers. The stronger the original emotional response to a type of situation, the stronger the memory.
When we experience something in the present, the brain scans its memory banks to see if what we are currently experiencing
is like anything we have experienced before. A positive finding may mean the matter does not need to be thought
through because the recipe for coping with the matter was written in the past. So instead of a rational response
we might simply react reflexively. When asked why we acted as we did, we might respond "Just intuition"
or "Just a gut feeling." Maturing consumers generally can safely rely more on their emotions than younger
adults can because they have a richer database of emotionally coded knowledge on how to manage situations.
Maturing consumers' first impressions tend to be more durable and difficult to reverse than those of younger adults.
This is not because maturing consumers are more pig-headed but because they have more confidence in their gut feelings.
Young adults often need proof to place unconditional confidence in something, this is the main reason atheism is
usually born in the youthful mind despite its limited knowledge about such deep matters as God.
Maturing consumers generally are more comfortable going on faith, a major reason that spirituality is generally
stronger among maturing consumers. When something feels right or wrong to an older adult, they likely will be less
inclined than a young adult, experiencing the same thing, to second guess those feelings. If an ad headline generates
a negative first impression (or none at all) the older person is less likely than a younger consumer to plunge
further into the ad. If an ad fails to connect with an older adult's idealized image of self, it is more likely
to be ignored than when a young adult sees an ad that fails to connect with his or her idealized image of self.
Maturing consumers are more resistant to absolutism. The young mind tends to see reality in simpler terms than
older minds do, and they tend to see things with absolute states or conditions: something either is or it is not.
Nuance and subtlety often create more confusion in the younger mind about a matter than understanding of it. In
contrast, maturing consumers tend to have greater appreciation for the finer definition that nuance and subtlety
give a matter. This bias results from a combination of experience and age-related changes in how the brain processes
information.
The predisposition of maturing consumers to reject absolutism means that marketing communications intended for
them should generally reflect a more conditional tone. Strongly worded and delivered claims about the features
and benefits of time sharing usually works better with younger, more literal-minded adults. A softer, more deferential,
more conditional approach is better suited to the older adult mind that sees reality in shades of gray.
Narrative works better for getting maturing consumers' attention than expository. Older minds work more out of
the brain's right hemisphere where engaging stories are mostly processed, so it makes sense that storytelling is
especially effective in marketing to maturing consumers. Stories generally arouse emotions more readily than emotionally
neutral expository. Research shows that the more emotionally neutral information is, the less likely the older
mind will give it attention. The younger mind, is less discriminating in this regard and may give emotionally neutral
information as much attention as emotionally enriched information.
After maturing consumers become emotionally interested in a product, they often want more
information than younger adults do. While maturing consumers tend to more quickly dismiss a marketing message if
it doesn't emotionally arouse them, once they do become emotionally involved with a marketing message or product,
they are quite likely to demand more product information than younger consumers. However, at this stage in their
shopping, they may prefer information to be relatively free of emotional coloring. Their enhanced sense of autonomy
can make them resistant to attempts by others to emotionally sway them.
Maturing consumers have slower cognitive processes and less stable attention spans. While their
intuitive skills may enable maturing consumers to size up a situation more quickly than young adults might, their
cognitive or reasoning processes are slower. They're also more quickly distracted by certain creative techniques
that work just the opposite for younger consumers. For example, a television commercial with many quick cuts in
visuals and fast moving, brassy frenetic music can rivet the attentions of younger consumers while disorienting
an older consumer.
Finally, maturing consumers tend to be more holistic in perceptions and thinking. They tend to be better at seeing
"the big picture" - to be more holistic in their thinking, because of more right brain activity in their
mental processes. The right brain sees reality in terms of relationships. The identity of parties to a relationship
is dependent on the relationship. To the right brain, nothing has meaning outside a relationship. The left brain,
in contrast, sees reality as a mosaic of isolated pieces in which each piece has a distinctively autonomous identity.
While the right brain "sees the forest," the left brain "sees the trees."
Given the right brain's view of reality as a webwork of relationships versus the left brain's view of reality as
so many independent pieces, an interesting idea emerges from the fact that the adult median age is now 44. This
means the majority of adults are in the time of life when mental activities are increasingly subject to the right
brain's relationships-based view of reality. That suggests that all the supposedly new ideas in marketing that
can be lumped under the term "relationship marketing" originated not in academe or business, but in the
collective mind of consumers - in what David Wolf calls "group mind."
Those are a few differences in mental processes in the first and second halves of life. Admittedly
they are generalities, but nothing can be said about behavior that is not a generality, but generalities
can have value when they express verifiable central themes. Such a theme is that marketing needs to be adjusted
to the facts that no two people perceive anything exactly the same way, and that genetic inheritance, experience
and processes of maturation contribute to the differing perceptions that exist between people.
At a time when such terms as "permission marketing," "one-to-one marketing," "customer
relationship management," and "online personalization" are widely bandied about, more serious thought
than has been the case needs be given the uniqueness of each of us, and why we are so unique.
As you develop new, or revisit existing, services for an aging marketplace consider the following a guide to design,
position or market them for the 50+ market:
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DO:
- Learn as much as you can about physical and behavioral changes caused by the aging process. Apply your knowledge
to service design, delivery and communications.
- Design your promotion or advertising to allow the consumer to define the service attributes using his/her imagination
in terms of his/her needs and desires.
- Design your facility to meet functional, social reinforcement, and related experiences' expectations.
- Promote and advertise your facility as a gateway to experiences as a result of buying the services, for example,
what other extraordinary experiences are available to the customer as a result of buying time share?
- Give the maturing consumer the facts (reduce hyperbole).
- Portray maturing consumers as doing for others, as individuals, as smart, as active, as wise.
- Use advertising firms with a demonstrated knowledge of the maturing consumer market (Check if people over 50
years of age are on the creative team).
- Use maturing consumers to assist in service and communications development.
- Touch their hearts and they will allow you to enter their minds.
DON'T:
- Underestimate the significance of the market to your company.
- Consider age a determinant of consumer behavior (there is no evidence that a person's age is a major factor
in determining buying habits). Age should be considered as a correlating factor only.
- Design your service or advertisements to appeal to self-gratifying interests of the consumer.
- Design or promote your services to appeal to the vulnerabilities associated with the aging process.
- Attempt to instill a "sense of urgency" during a purchase consideration (time is usually not of the
essence in their decision making process).
- Over-embellish product or service performance claims -- may be automatically perceived as misleading as would
small print on product labels and advertising.
- Stress self-indulgent or luxury aspects of your product/service -- more effective in younger markets.
- Stress images that are contrary to traditional basic values. Generally accepted universal or traditional values
may include American flag, church or temple, home, traditional small town, etc.
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Timeshare companies that understand the dynamics of the aging process, and incorporate that knowledge into business
and communications decision making, will be better equipped to achieve success in an aging marketplace. Remember
that maturing consumers, on average, have a superior sense of reality. Don't succumb to the myths and stereotyping
about aging that pervades our society -- you may do so at the expense of the long term potential of your business.
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