Skewer Status Appeals to Seniors

People enjoy having a higher standing in the social hierarchy, with the privileges this brings. That’s why marketing appeals to status are used so often and work so well. But studies at Leipzig University indicate such initiatives are wasted when addressed at older adults. Seniors care substantially less about social standing than they did when younger.
     Seniors do want to know where they stand. One reason people continue employment beyond the time they could retire is that they enjoy the structure of the workplace and any status they’ve achieved as the old hand.
     That status might not be much, though, and there’s a likelihood the older worker will experience discrimination because of their age rather than respect for their achievements and wisdom. In Western cultures, the relationship between age and social status generally plots as an inverted U. In middle age, we feel higher status than we do when young or old.
     Both on the job and off, the discrimination is painful, and it can be illegal. But the desire to know where they stand in the social hierarchy does not mean they’ll respond to marketing which promises to give higher status or protect against drops in status.
     In the studies, self-perceptions of decreased social standing led to less negative affect and rises in social standing led to less positive affect than was the case when these people were younger. This research was a longitudinal study, so it tracked the changes from middle age to old age over time in the same set of individuals.
     With seniors, appeal to values other than social status. Older consumers place relatively higher importance on self-direction, tradition, security, and benevolence. They prize independent thought and action, respect long-standing customs, seek safety and stability, and welcome opportunities to attend to the welfare of others similar to them.
     Compared to salespeople, who are usually younger than them, the elderly place less importance on accumulating power or demonstrating expertise. Seniors are relatively less sensitive to peer pressure. That’s perhaps most clearly true for the oldest old. When you’re 98 years old, let’s say, there simply aren’t that many peers around.
     University of Stuttgart analyses concluded that older people make purchase decisions too impulsively. The reviewers attributed this to the trouble the aged brain often has in filtering out irrelevant thoughts and maintaining focus. The freedom from social status constraints might also contribute to the impulse buying.

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