Today's richest market is the New Customer Majority-middle-aged and older adults who make up the biggest percentage of the buying public. Never before have adults 40 years and older been in the majority. Understanding this population and persuasively selling to it require a new kind of marketing research arsenal. In Ageless Marketing, authors David Wolfe and Robert Snyder document the results of a groundbreaking research project on the aging boomer generation, detailing the core values, buying behaviors, and emotional factors that distinguish the New Customer Majority. As more companies seek sales from multiple age groups, "ageless marketing" becomes critical to financial performance. Companies that master its subtleties have realized amazing profits. New Balance, for example, saw an annual rate of 25 percent or more with its ageless marketing themes, even when the athletic shoe industry had shown no growth since 1997. Ageless Marketing introduces a new research approach in profiling this lucrative market. Companies that want to tap into this important segment will get insights into the characteristic values and motivations that trigger the New Customer Majority's spending choices. Wolfe and Snyder describe the challenges in marketing to this group, the stages and differences in their life experiences, and the ways to make meaningful marketing overtures. Above all, readers will see how "empathetic connections" drive many buying decisions for this market, why traditional ploys simply will not work, and how to create marketing campaigns that yield continuing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Boy, does business ever need this book!
I've been in marketing and advertising for 20 years --- I've worked with some of the most sophisticated brands --- I know what makes a sound business proposition, and I've seen companies desperate to find a way to build their sales and profitability. And yet I've never heard a business exec say, "You know - we really should be taking a look at the mature market."
Instead, what I HAVE witnessed is an obstinate blindness about what is clearly THE market opportunity of the next two decades. With baffling consistency, the marketing press is full of companies trumpeting their initiatives to capture the youth market. Brands well-established in the high-quality, high-income, mature market segment fervently re-invent themselves to appeal to more youthful consumers.
Mercedes, for example - a brand which virtually owned the "I've been working for 20 years and I've earned it" upper end of the auto market - has been diluting their valuable brand equity by introducing little mini-Mercedes cheap enough for young people to afford. Toyota - with executives wringing their hands over the fact that the average age of their buyer base is 46 - gallops off to build the Scion, intended to be sort of a college dorm room on wheels. (Ironically, they've found the Scion average buyers are well into their mid-30s.)
Every single week Ad Age and Brandweek have some article bemoaning TV's declining ability to reach the "highly coveted demographic of men 18-34." Who covets this audience? Beer and pizza makers, perhaps - other than that, and maybe motorcycles - in what categories are they the primary buyers? And advertising agencies stubbornly continue to limit the upper end of their media segmentation to 54 years old ("Women, 25-54"). What are they thinking --- everyone suddenly drops dead at 55?
On the contrary, as demonstrated so clearly and convincingly by this book, Ageless Marketing. The numbers are unassailable - Over the next two decades, the ranks of 50+ consumers will swell like a tsunami while the number of under 50 consumers will dribble to a trickle and then actually decline.
Not only that, but it shouldn't be news to anyone that older people have more money than younger people - a lot more. And in case you're thinking they hoard it under a mattress, know that their per capita spending averages 2.5 times the levels of younger people. In the automotive business, an article published recently in the Wall Street Journal said: On average, over the "lifetime" of a household, the individuals in that household buy 13 cars; seven of them - the majority - are bought after the head of household reaches 50 years of age.
So let me get this straight, Mercedes: you're going to enrich your brand by leaving your traditional older, wealthy buyer base behind in order to chase after a market segment that is shrinking and has no money?! Toyota - you're actually concerned that your brand is strongest among consumers that buy more cars and have more money?
The Baby Boomers once didn't trust anyone over thirty. Now there isn't a one of them that isn't over forty. Times have changed! In a way, times have gone back to normal. During what other period in history have teens and 20-somethings been the driving forces in commerce or culture? Revolutions, sure; they're always the driving forces in revolutions. But in commerce, they're not. They're kids for crying out loud - they don't have any money!!
It's remarkably difficult to break our culture's absolute conviction that young consumers are every marketer's best prospect. They're not. And until we all get that through our heads, we're going to continue to miss some major market opportunities.
Ageless Marketing not only helps you get it through your head, but it helps you understand that when you do market to older consumers, you need to change your ways. Older consumers screen communications differently, process information differently, respond based on different life priorities and selection preferences.
David Wolfe and Robert Snyder understand those differences, and help readers get in touch with what they need to do to act on them. Their wealth of experience and insight are apparent, and there are tons of examples and ideas that make it easy to understand how to apply what they're saying.
Obviously this is a topic I think is important. Thank heavens there's finally a book that collects all the facts and crystallizes the thinking! I give copies to my clients, and recommend it to my co-workers all the time. My own copy is dog-eared and marked up and so full of notes it's almost hard to read any more. I guess I'll just have to buy another copy!
I've been in marketing and advertising for 20 years --- I've worked with some of the most sophisticated brands --- I know what makes a sound business proposition, and I've seen companies desperate to find a way to build their sales and profitability. And yet I've never heard a business exec say, "You know - we really should be taking a look at the mature market."
Instead, what I HAVE witnessed is an obstinate blindness about what is clearly THE market opportunity of the next two decades. With baffling consistency, the marketing press is full of companies trumpeting their initiatives to capture the youth market. Brands well-established in the high-quality, high-income, mature market segment fervently re-invent themselves to appeal to more youthful consumers.
Mercedes, for example - a brand which virtually owned the "I've been working for 20 years and I've earned it" upper end of the auto market - has been diluting their valuable brand equity by introducing little mini-Mercedes cheap enough for young people to afford. Toyota - with executives wringing their hands over the fact that the average age of their buyer base is 46 - gallops off to build the Scion, intended to be sort of a college dorm room on wheels. (Ironically, they've found the Scion average buyers are well into their mid-30s.)
Every single week Ad Age and Brandweek have some article bemoaning TV's declining ability to reach the "highly coveted demographic of men 18-34." Who covets this audience? Beer and pizza makers, perhaps - other than that, and maybe motorcycles - in what categories are they the primary buyers? And advertising agencies stubbornly continue to limit the upper end of their media segmentation to 54 years old ("Women, 25-54"). What are they thinking --- everyone suddenly drops dead at 55?
On the contrary, as demonstrated so clearly and convincingly by this book, Ageless Marketing. The numbers are unassailable - Over the next two decades, the ranks of 50+ consumers will swell like a tsunami while the number of under 50 consumers will dribble to a trickle and then actually decline.
Not only that, but it shouldn't be news to anyone that older people have more money than younger people - a lot more. And in case you're thinking they hoard it under a mattress, know that their per capita spending averages 2.5 times the levels of younger people. In the automotive business, an article published recently in the Wall Street Journal said: On average, over the "lifetime" of a household, the individuals in that household buy 13 cars; seven of them - the majority - are bought after the head of household reaches 50 years of age.
So let me get this straight, Mercedes: you're going to enrich your brand by leaving your traditional older, wealthy buyer base behind in order to chase after a market segment that is shrinking and has no money?! Toyota - you're actually concerned that your brand is strongest among consumers that buy more cars and have more money?
The Baby Boomers once didn't trust anyone over thirty. Now there isn't a one of them that isn't over forty. Times have changed! In a way, times have gone back to normal. During what other period in history have teens and 20-somethings been the driving forces in commerce or culture? Revolutions, sure; they're always the driving forces in revolutions. But in commerce, they're not. They're kids for crying out loud - they don't have any money!!
It's remarkably difficult to break our culture's absolute conviction that young consumers are every marketer's best prospect. They're not. And until we all get that through our heads, we're going to continue to miss some major market opportunities.
Ageless Marketing not only helps you get it through your head, but it helps you understand that when you do market to older consumers, you need to change your ways. Older consumers screen communications differently, process information differently, respond based on different life priorities and selection preferences.
David Wolfe and Robert Snyder understand those differences, and help readers get in touch with what they need to do to act on them. Their wealth of experience and insight are apparent, and there are tons of examples and ideas that make it easy to understand how to apply what they're saying.
Obviously this is a topic I think is important. Thank heavens there's finally a book that collects all the facts and crystallizes the thinking! I give copies to my clients, and recommend it to my co-workers all the time. My own copy is dog-eared and marked up and so full of notes it's almost hard to read any more. I guess I'll just have to buy another copy!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By Brent Green
Format:Hardcover
Every busy executive needs to understand why reading a book is worth the investment. Thousands of new marketing and business books, published annually, create an impossible dilemma: We cannot read them all. Many are frankly not worth the cost or time. (How many of such failures have made it easier for you to fall asleep at night?) So, why read this book?
Occasionally, someone comes up with an original insight that revolutionizes marketing communications. The brand positioning idea, spawned by Jack Trout and Al Ries in 1972, illustrates such a bellwether paradigm shift.
Ageless Marketing is a paradigm shift, not just for one scintillating idea, but also for dozens of conceptual breakthroughs that will influence the nature of 21st century marketing communications.
David Wolfe shatters the youth-centric foundation of contemporary marketing communications by pointing to unassailable demographic facts: people 40 and older now outnumber 18- to 39-year-olds by 123 million to 85 million; by 2010, the margin will become 138 million to 87 million.
Survival for many products and services depends on their custodians successfully embracing, as Wolfe calls it, the New Customer Majority. Ignore this clarion call and risk extinction. As the author decrees: "The sweet spot for the next decade will be 45- to 64-year olds."
Wolfe then introduces and richly illustrates new ways of selling successfully to an aging population. Positing fresh insights drawn from human biology, motivational psychology and neuroscience, he deftly obliterates outdated, product-centric beliefs that govern marketing hegemony today.
For example, instead of selling with product benefits - which worked during the bygone era of a youth-dominated society - marketers must now reveal a brand's gestalt emotionally, yet ambiguously, so each customer completes the brand's definition within an individuated context. This approach addresses the very nature of mature minds existing in a time of product and service over-capacity. Contrary to popular opinion, today's brands must speak rather than shout.
The New Customer Majority responds favorably to experiential segmentation rather than classic demographic or psychographic segmentation. Instead of designing advertising programs to appeal to base self-interest, marketers will be more effective if their product messages point toward the nearly universal quest for self-actualization. Appealing to unique customer-segment values is far more durable than appealing to group behaviors or demographic generalizations.
On this point, co-author Robert Snyder unveils the Value Portraits of Americans older than 45. The sophisticated (and once highly proprietary) research describes 17 different Portraits or psychological profiles of mature consumers, based on primary and enduring values. This segmentation approach has been useful in tailoring marketing messages, as the author adroitly illustrates with a campaign for an outdated retirement community. By paying close attention to Value Portraits for current and prospective community members, his creative team successfully transformed the image of a home for the very elderly into a revitalized community for active adults.
Why read this book before any of the other marketing books recently or soon-to-be published?
Authors Wolfe and Snyder have tapped a veritable marketing wellspring by squarely addressing the changing needs and priorities of an aging population. They propose new ways to reach and motivate the more introspective, individuated and autonomous mature mind. They defend their conjectures and conclusions with pertinent marketing case studies, scientific research and ... call it wisdom borne of deep thought.
Ageless Marketing is that infrequent achievement of marketing discovery packaged with sound analysis. The implications for your business surely will lead to a confident "ah-ha"!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
David B. Wolfe is clearly the brightest mind in America when it comes to understanding and communicating with the New Customer Majority (consumers age 40 and older). No current or previous publication on how to communicate with and serve middle age and older adults even comes close to delivering proven strategies and principles grounded mind research, developmental psychology and marketing practice. Mature Marketing practitioner, Robert Snyder's addition of real world research and values-based marketing applications of Wolfe's principles and guidelines add a depth missing in Wolfe's "Serving the Ageless Market". Those that have followed Wolfe's advice have experienced exceptional success over the last decade when companies or clients, a minority, had the vision and wisdom to adopt a new paradigm. This is a must read for business survival in a market dominated by the New Customer Majority for the coming decades.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book for business leaders
A book that I keep referring to. Very well written. My only criticism, I would have liked to have seen more real world cases or examples.
Published on October 12, 2009 by Nico
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of the Lot
I have recently read quite a few books on marketing to the "new senior" market. This is the best. It is centered on good marketing and business principles and provides factual... Read more
Published on November 27, 2006 by Louise A. Cook
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Gem
I've read more business and marketing books than I care to remember, but this frog kissing process is necessary to discover those few books that deserve to be studied. Read more
Published on June 13, 2005 by Richard J. Frazier
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Consciousness
Here's a book that offers a profound new vision of persons in mid-life and the years beyond, one that explore the complexity of the population they've labeled, "second-half... Read more
Published on June 14, 2004 by Connie Goldman
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Ground-breaking Work
As people age, their buying preferences, priorities and behaviors change dramtically. Ageless Marketing is the only book that addresses this phenomenon -- and brilliantly. Read more
Published on June 4, 2004 by Sharon Whiteley, CEO ThirdAge
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ageless Marketing by David Wolfe
There are a lot of people who know a lot of things about aging in America, and its impact on Marketing.
Mr. Read more
Mr. Read more
Published on June 3, 2004 by Michael Baumayr
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding the Customer and His/Her Motivations
He has done it again. David Wolfe with Robert Snyder has expanded and redefined the new paradigm for serving and marketing to mature consumers. Read more
Published on May 21, 2004 by Stephen Wright
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wolfe and Snyder give new meaning to the word 'relevance'
Although the market place has evolved in the years since Proctor & Gamble coined the term `Marketing' and brought it to our consciousness, marketing practice hasn't. Read more
Published on May 11, 2004 by Anthony R. Edwards
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book of incredible insight
David Wolfe is a man of incredible insight and wisdom. He is the personification of the term "thought leader. Read more
Published on May 10, 2004 by James Weil
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Read!
As American markets have evolved, so has the consumer. The aging American consumer (40 and over), now the New Customer Majority, makes purchasing decisions based on values, a shift... Read more
Published on April 29, 2004 by Rolf Dobelli
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 28
books:
See all 28 books this book cites
2
books
cite this book:
- Old Age Journey Into Simplicity by Helen M. Luke on 4 pages
- Toward a Psychology of Being, 3rd Edition by Abraham H. Maslow on 4 pages
- The Psychology of Consciousness (Arkana) by Robert E. Ornstein on page 83, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Marketing Revolution: A Radical Manifesto for Dominating the Market Place by Kevin J. Clancy on page 13, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Healthy Pleasures by Robert E. Ornstein on page 122, and Back Matter
See all 28 books this book cites
- The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide to Raising $1,000 Gifts By Mail by Mal Warwick in Back Matter
- Marketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market by Marti Barletta on page 275
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