Everyone as a child has at least one moment when they think to themselves, "I will not be like my parents." Although this thought tends to appear in a moment of 'unfair' punishment or discipline of some kind, it does seem to be the beginning of one's fear of growing old. At the extreme, the elderly are described as being 'invisible.' The Pharmaceutical industry cherishes this population, but from a retail industry perspective, I cannot argue against the attitude of invisibility. Gap, Inc. has a brand for every generation of one's life up until the stretches of middle age. If however, there is a huge demographic shift occurring, why is the retail industry not focused on this population?
The baby boom generation is considered to be those persons born between 1946 and 1964. That means that as of the spring of 2010, these persons' ages range from 64 down to 46. Some consider the baby boomers to be 'middle age' rather than elderly, but by AARP standards, there is no distinction. The baby boomers seem to get lost in a retail market no mans land. With parents who are 60, I wouldn't begin to argue that these folks are slowing down, nor are they receding from trends. They should not then be ignored.
On one extreme of the boomer group you have Bill Gates and Barack Obama. No marketer and/or product developer would dream of trying to discount the engagement of these customers. On the other side, however you have folks like my stepfather, who responded to a post I wrote on his Facebook wall, by responding directly to the email notification he received about it, in spite of the fact that he will sit in front of his computer for hours reading newspapers online. It's not hard to imagine then that a dinner table conversation will involve the report of some ad that appeared while he read that newspaper for hours online. My stepfather may not realize that he is supposed to respond by making a post on my wall, nor that he can engage with the newspaper more deeply online rather than in hard copy by reading comments and posting comments, but the time he spends online should not be overlooked by marketers.
Admittedly, watching my mother and stepfather discuss technology is literally like watching a dog chase his tail, or listening to nails on a chalkboard, but I've noticed over the past couple of years as mobility trends have increased and become more fundamental to everyday routines, that their rate of adoption while 'slow' and unpredictable by young standards, is incredibly loyal once it occurs.
The trouble then, is that you have two extremes in one target audience group. For marketers and product developers alike, this poses the question of whether you segment the market or find products/strategies that appeal across the entire population.
A report from a Forrester survey conducted last fall found that compared to their Gen Y counterparts (ages 18-29), boomers will spend more time shopping around online before making a purchase. However, more than half of boomers find brand names to be more important than price when making a decision. This is important when you consider the distribution of wealth held by baby boomers. Tom Mann of TR Mann Consulting, which specializes in marketing for boomers, says, "[baby boomers] control the bulk of the nation's wealth . . . and they shop! According to a recent study by Nielsen and Hallmark Channels, households with baby boomer members account for nearly $230 billion in sales of consumer packaged goods and represent 55% of total consumer packaged goods sales." Additionally, recall that the baby boomer generation was the first generation of disposable income. They were the first generation to believe that a new, fresh wardrobe should be purchased every season. It is no surprise then that they continue their shopping ways online. Product developers should take heed.
Marketers then are challenged with understanding the activities of this audeince: if they like to shop so much and they aren't browsing to find the lowest price, what then are they spending their time browsing on?
Perhaps they are consuming more social content than expected. Indeed, according to Jeremiah K. Owyang, about two thirds of boomers are actually consuming social content. They are hardly engaging with it by Gen Y standards, but between 2007 and 2008 engagement more than doubled. Mobility strategies therefore should make sure to include the boom generation in their target audience even if boomers are not actively engaging with the social content. This will be especially true given that the recent growth of Facebook has largely been attributed to this boomer generation, specifically female baby boomers.
If you are still skeptical that the barriers for adoption are too stark for net-new boomers to engage with social media, consider the fact that as of November 2009, 59% of the boomer generation was employed full time compared with the 51% of the general population. In fact, the young boomers (aged 44-53) engaged with the internet at work more frequently than either Gen Y or Gen X. This means that while they did not grow up on computers and on the internet, they are increasingly gaining the necessary skill set to engage with and capitalize on mobility.
Lastly, if retailers do not address the baby boomers in this generation, perhaps they should be aware that as the baby boomer generation begins to pass away, an enormous transfer of wealth will occur in the country.
What then are retailers doing to specifically capitalize on the very loyal market segment of baby boomers today or their children tomorrow?
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[i] Mitskaviets, Ina. "Online Baby Boomers: A Demographic Profile". Forrester. November 2, 2009
[ii] Mann, Tom. "Marketing to Baby Boomers and the Mature Market". http://www.trmann.com/documents/MarketingtoBabyBoomersandtheMatureMarket.pdf.
[iii] Owyang, Jeremiah K.. "How to Reach Baby Boomers With Social Technologies". Forrester. January 23, 2009.
