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L'âge est vraiment un état d'esprit (par Jennifer Warren) - Age subjectif In the U.S.’s future, marketing to seniors will become even more important as the group of those 65-years and older nearly doubles in size: from 37 million to 72 million by 2030. There are already entire cottage industries marketing to them, whether in consumer goods, financial services or health care. International marketers want to know how to reach seniors as well. New research about segmenting Japanese seniors reveals that chronological age is not the best metric to use in segmenting this group, and this fact holds true for those marketing to Westerners too. For over twenty years, Marketing Professor Tom Barry of SMU Cox has been researching the senior market segment alongside his co-author Stuart Van Auken of Florida Gulf Coast University, who specializes on the international side. This research builds on their prior work published in top journals. A focal point of the research is the notion of “cognitive” age, the age that one feels or sees oneself as. While cognitive age has been studied and confirmed as important in the West, the study in a Japanese context is a first-of-its-kind. Japan, being one of the largest economies in the world with an already larger aging population, serves as a good proxy for global segmentation research regardless of embedded Japanese cultural mores. “In this study, we see similarities between college-educated Japanese seniors and the New Age elderly in the U.S. based on attitudes and behaviors,” Barry explains. “There’s been this notion about Japanese seniors being different than Westerns because of cultural mores, but college-educated Japanese seniors are very similar to U.S. ones, in spite of it. This gives greater relevance to the study of the Japanese.” The study, based on college-educated Japanese age 55 years and older, reveals a “new Japanese senior.” They have played a role in the Japanese economic miracle and value their independence. By 2015, empty nest senior affluents are projected to be responsible for one quarter of all spending in Japan. These new seniors are spending more on leisure, luxury, physical activities and travel than senior generations past. Educational pursuits are also gaining ground with this group, as well as cosmetic and anti-aging products. Age is relative The study found that Japanese seniors who are younger, psychologically speaking, have more positive attitudes toward life satisfaction and aging than those who are cognitively older. Cognitive age is a good predictor of self-concepts, attitudes and behavior. “Cognitive age is one’s ‘feel age,’ that is how old you feel, which is both self-reported and scientifically measured,” says Barry. “You can measure this notion of cognitive age well both domestically and overseas.” The study also looked into what the Japanese seniors’ ideal age was, the age which they want to be as compared to what they actually are. “Cognitively younger Japanese revealed that their ideal age was close to their pyschological age. ‘I want to be the age that I am,’” notes Barry. It turns out that ideal age is not a very good descriptor for segmentation. In prior research, Van Auken, Barry and colleagues found that cognitive age as a metric is culture free – life events are more meaningful. For example, the loss of a spouse, a decline in health, or another loss situation downgrades one’s aging perspective and raises their cognitive age regardless of cultural values. Also life changes impact consumer preferences. Generally those with a younger outlook than their actual age should evidence better health and be absent loss, which influences personal economics, life satisfaction, attitudes toward aging, and activities and level of participation in organizations. The younger feeling senior engages in more activities. The two groups which emerged from the study, the cognitively younger and the cognitively older, display tendencies geared toward these top activities: reading books, social club membership, shopping in department stores, dining out, and taking photographs. A next level of popular activities were visiting an art gallery or museum and using a computer. The cognitively younger seniors were engaged in more activities than were the cognitively older seniors. Finding Marketing Meaning Real age masks attitudes and behaviors. The cognitively older Japanese senior saw themselves as six years younger than their actual age, while the younger group felt ten years younger than they were in actuality. This was in spite of the two groups being close in chronological age. Japan has been referred to as the “soft sell” nation as opposed to the U.S.’s hard sell approach. The marketer in Japan relies heavily on celebrities in their television ads. In terms of advertising, Japan is more Japanese than Western. The authors suggest that message strategies be developed which embrace the cognitively younger orientation of seniors and choose celebrities that reflect that message. One cultural characteristic noted was the Japanese’ affinity for the masculine, and its affect for male celebrities. The message to marketers is to focus on feel age, not real age. “This study says natural age is not a good descriptor or discriminator upon which to base segments,” Barry relays. “You see it all the time in varied demographic groupings like 29-40 year-old females, 55- 64 year-old married couples, etc. But there are so many psychological variations of age within those segments. We segment in this way because it is easy and we can.” Barry acknowledges that there are some demographics that are useful for segmenting, but importantly cognitive age is a driver. He suggests using this in persuasive messages. “Use models that are cognitively younger; they don’t have to look younger, but have a persona that is psychologically younger. The content of advertising, sales, and marketing messages should be cognitively based. For example, we don’t use medicine to avoid osteoporosis because we are afraid our bones will break, but because we want to go to the museum and play golf.” The whole point of the research: ‘Think strategically. It’s quite simple.’ Age is really a state of mind. Everyone knows this intuitively, but it is scientifically validated by the study. “We are trying to understand why people do things— what’s inside the black box of the mind,” Barry concludes. “Marketing is not rocket science; there’s a lot of intuition about it.” Adding the metric of “feel age’ in demographic profiling can bring greater power of inference about the aging outlooks and activity patterns of Japanese seniors. In addition, this concept is useful across-the-board in all types of senior segmentation research. The paper “Assessing the nomological validity of a cognitive age segmentation of Japanese seniors” by Tom Barry of SMU Cox and Stuart Van Auken was just published in Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics. Written by Jennifer Warren.   Par Jennifer Warren le 23-10-2009