A great cover story article in Baron's titled Boomer Consumer discusses how companies that continue to ignore the over-50 set do so at their peril, as "boomer consumers" eat up a larger slice of the nation's spending pie.
I've blogged about this topic extensively the last twelve months (including related topics):
- Event Review: 2009 Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit
- Staying Relevant With An Aging Population. An Elderhostel Case Study.
- Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer
Key points from the Baron's article:
I've blogged about this topic extensively the last twelve months (including related topics):
- Event Review: 2009 Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit
- Staying Relevant With An Aging Population. An Elderhostel Case Study.
- Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer
Key points from the Baron's article:
- Increasingly, the 77 million [aging boomers] are being ignored by advertisers and marketers.
- By 2015, when all the boomers will be 50-plus, folks aged 50 to 75 will account for 40% of adult consumers, up from 36.8% now. And they will boast the most spendable cash. Yet advertisers and marketers still seem to devote about 90% of their energy to wooing the 18-49 group, and 10% to those 50-plus.
- Does it make sense, after all, for NBC's suits to judge a new TV show like Jay Leno's mainly on its appeal to 18-to-49-year-olds, as some published reports say is the case? Leno's advertisers include companies such as BMW, many of whose buyers are 50 or older.
- But while the aging boomers certainly will be a bonanza to health-care outfits -- they already account for two-thirds of the spending on pharmaceuticals -- they will be anteing up a lot more for other things.
- The 50-plus set already accounts for 45% of all U.S. consumer spending and, Francese predicts, the figure could ultimately approach 50% by 2015.
- One myth is that older Americans are much more interested in shedding furniture and housewares than in buying them because most are empty-nesters. The reality: Older consumers account for more than 40% of the money spent on new household furnishings and equipment in the U.S.
- Bottom line: Older consumers will keep trudging off to Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Wal-Mart Stores and Ikea for years.
- Boomerologist Martin partly blames ad agencies for what he views as
" He says a disproportionately large number of advertising copywriters, account managers and art directors are young. "Ask them to do an ad targeting the 50-plus demographic, and they default to a gray-haired senior limping down a beach trailed by an aging golden retriever," he adds. - Take 1965 (see chart on this blog post) when the oldest boomers were turning 18, then jump to 1995, when the very oldest were turning 49. Over these three decades, the number of U.S. residents aged 18 to 49 soared from 78.6 million to 125.9 million. In the same period, the 50-to-75-year-old cohort, many of them a product of the birth dearth of the 1930s, rose far more slowly.
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