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Buy our book, Boomer Consumer, today | | Voted "Best of the Best" Business Books in by CORBIS.
Available and in stock online at Amazon.com, BN.com and at Barnes & Noble stores in major markets.
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Read:
Longevity Rules:
How to Age Well into the Future | |
Available online at Eskaton
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| Can't Get Enough of that Baby Boomer Stuff? |
There's more. Oh, yes, there's much more.
On the Web:
Check out the Boomer Project Web site where we archive our published content and tell you how to line up Matt Thornhill and John Martin as speakers. We tweet: Follow us on Twitter.
Visit the Older Dominion Partnership, a Virginia-based consortium of businesses, not-for-profits, universities and government agencies planning 10 to 20 years ahead for the Age Wave of aging Boomers. |
| About Us |
The Boomer Project offers the most thorough and up-to-date portrait of today's Boomer Consumer. How can we help?
We offer consulting to help companies and organizations develop their "50+ plan." If you don't have one, you better. It's the only demographic segment that will increase in size over the next decade, growing some 23% while the 18-49 segment stays stagnant (Census data, baby).
We also conduct on-site programs, where we educate your marketing and/or customer service personnel about how today's Boomer Consumers think, feel and respond to your messages. These day-long sessions include insights obtained from our on-going proprietary national research among Boomers.
Contact us to learn more about all of our services.
Email: info@boomerproject.com
Phone: 804.690.4837
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July 6, 2010
News & Insights from the Boomer Project |
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Dear Matt,
Here in Boomer Project land, it is 102 degrees today. This marks the second day of three in a row over 100, and the eighth day already this summer with temperatures over 100.
No wonder things are a little hot this summer for Al Gore.
Our summer issue has four stories about today's Boomers -- starting with a report on the news that the lonevity gene has been identified. Boomers really can live forever.
We also report on a jeans marketer targeting Boomers (we couldn't resist the whole "gene" and "jeans" thing -- it must be the heat).
This month you'll also learn about "Alpha Daughters" and a possible new role for convenience stores in a marketplace with more older consumers.
Take our advice: read it all in air-conditioned splendor.
-- The Editors
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Future Thinking
The Road to Living Forever
Maybe you saw the news reported last week by The Wall Street Journal:
By analyzing the DNA of the world's oldest people, Boston University scientists said Thursday they have discovered a genetic signature of longevity. They expect soon to offer a test that could let people learn whether they have the constitution to live to a very old age.
In addition to the article, the Web site includes a poll where some 73% of about 2,300 respondents say they want to know if they have the longevity gene. Only about one in four say they don't want to know.
A lead scientist, Boston University geriatrician Thomas Perls, offers this comment: "I don't think people are ready for this from a social point of view; but I don't think that will stop companies from trying to market this." Two huge understatements in one sentence!
Interestingly, the scientists are not in this for money - instead they plan to make a free test kit available online later this month (to foster longevity research, they say).
The implications of consumers of any age knowing their genetic predisposition to longevity are many. This new data point for Boomers is especially troubling.
On the one hand, Boomers are the first generation in the history of the world to reach age 60 and think we have a realistic chance to reach age 100. On the other hand, which is deep in a Big Grab bag of Lay's Potato Chips, some 34% of Boomer men and 38% of Boomer women are considered obese (see report from JAMA). Not only that, 78% of Boomer men and 66% of Boomer women are considered "overweight" by the CDC.
Fat chance fat Boomers will live to 100.
Back to the longevity gene: We wonder if knowing will motivate people to take better care of themselves, or to do the opposite and pay even less attention to diet, exercise and health regimens. We also wonder what companies will indeed be the first to market access to this information.
To us, the broader question isn't if we're going to enjoy longer lives, but what does longevity really mean? How will living longer change individuals, communities, governments, organizations, and society and culture?
That's exactly the topic tackled in the new book, Longevity Rules: How to Age Well into the Future, published by Eskaton, the nonprofit senior living organization in northern California. The book is 34 essays from the nation's leading thinkers, researchers, academics and experts on the impact of an older population (and yes, we were fortunate enough to be asked to contribute and did so by providing the opening section called "Aging by the Numbers" as well as an essay on where and how we'll live).
Contributing essays include pieces by Dr. Robert Butler, head of the International Longevity Center; Dr. Gary Small, head of the UCLA Center on Aging; Eric Dishman of Intel; Dr. Bill Thomas of the Eden Alternative; Harry (Rick) Moody of AARP and many, many more top authorities. Even if we did not contribute, we'd recommend it highly.
If you do get yourself tested and learn you have the longevity gene, this is the book to read to learn what that longer life might be like.
If a long life is not ahead of you, it's still worth knowing what's next. |
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Case Study
Forever in Blue Jeans
 Blue jeans have been around since Levi Strauss sold them to California gold miners in the 1850s, but it wasn't until the 1950s that they became a favored apparel of Silent Generation teenagers, and until the 1970s that Boomers turned them into a fashion statement. As the youngest Boomers turn 46 this year and the older Boomers are entering retirement, jeans remain as popular as ever. But apparel designers face a quandary: How do you keep jeans hip and fashionable when Boomers are expanding their waist lines?
In the year ending April 2010, U.S. retailers sold 357 million pairs of women's jeans for $8.3 billion -- a five percent increase in dollar volume from the previous year. Women age 55 and older are the fastest growing group of denim buyers. They spent $1.1 billion on jeans this year, up 38 percent from last year.
The high end of the business is not driving sales. Indeed, several chi-chi brands that designed jeans for women with super-model figures and sold them for $250 to $300 a pop have gone out of business or filed for bankruptcy. But new designers are always entering the market. The Chicago Times profiles Henry-Lee and Co., a Chicago firm that is betting there is a big market for "contemporary jeans that fit without looking dowdy."
The Boomer line: We think Henry-Lee is on to something. Jeans, the defining apparel of the Boomer generation, have nostalgia appeal. Jeans also fit the tenor of the times: Boomer consumers are still feeling frugal, and $50 is a better price point these days than $250.
If the company can find a cut that looks as good on Boomer women as it does on the newly voluptuous Jessica Simpson (see photo), it will have a hit on its hands.
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Marketing
Alpha Daughters: New Super Consumer  A new kind of consumer is making her presence felt in the marketplace - the Alpha Daughter.
Many seniors delegate major purchasing decisions to their children, especially when the purchases are made online. Typically, the child happens to be the main care giver, who is usually a daughter. One path to influencing the elderly parents is through that daughter, contends Peter Kruger, an analyst with UK-based Wireless Healthcare.
"[Alpha Daughters] are often caring for aging parents and are already a key target for companies marketing healthcare devices and services," Kruger says in comments meant to apply to the U.S. marketplace as well as the UK. "They also arrange travel, organize house repairs and make major purchases, such as furniture and consumer electronics, on their parents' behalf."
The Alpha Daughter plays a role as a proxy consumer similar to that of the Alpha Mom, a mother who purchases goods and services on behalf of her children. Alpha Moms account for an estimated 70% of household expenditure.
It is unclear from the narrative in the Alphadaughters.com press release whether Kruger sees Alpha Daughters as members of the Boomer generation or children of the Boomer generation. Perhaps the confusion is cleared up in his research paper, available for £175 (plus value-added tax) online. Our hunch is that the Alpha Daughter phenomenon started in the Boomer generation - Boomer Moms took charge of their careers and their children, and now they're taking charge of their senior parents - and that the pattern will replicated by Boomer children.
The Boomer line: Pay attention to the Alpha Mom/Alpha Daughter phenomenon. Female Boomers in multi-generational families are emerging as a super-consumer who dominates spending decisions not only for their own households but those of their aging parents as well.
At the very least, "Alpha Daughter" sure sounds better than "Sandwich Generation" (despite reference in first story to the obesity epidemic).
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Healthy Eating
Health Food at 7-11 or Wawa?
Boomers undergo a metamorphosis in their convenience store shopping preferences as they grow older, according to research conducted by NPD's Convenience Store Monitor.
Young Boomers still in the workforce place a greater emphasis on convenience; older or retired Boomers are looking for healthier food. why they are shopping in convenience stores is beyond us.
Interestingly, that's the mirror image of younger generations. Young adults (18 to 33) tend to purchase more "fresh food." (NPD's definition of "fresh" may differ from yours. The category refers to food prepared on site, including pizza and burgers as well as fresh fruits and veggies.)
Generation Xers are more interested in convenience.
"When you look at how the Boomers ... today have affected the category just by their sheer numbers, it's important to understand how their behavior will change as they age and the impact it will have," says David Portalatin, industry analyst for NPD's convenience store channel research. "Think about Boomers as they move out of the workforce, and how their changing lifestyles will alter how they use c-stores."
Playing to the increased interest in healthier food, the website of industry leader Wawa provides a Meal Builder calculator so customers can estimate the dietary damage inflicted by their personalized sandwich. Thus, we find that a breakfast sandwich containing scrambled eggs, bacon, provolone cheese, hot peppers and Buffalo Blue cheese spread slapped inside a Kaiser roll has only 650 calories.
The Boomer line: Boomers are the reason convenience stores were invented. It's no surprise that they will be the reason they refocus from the days of the 7-11 hot dog of dubious quality to a custom-made fresh sandwich that's fairly healthy.
And that should benefit all ages. |
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