Best Buy has announced it will buy the owner of Jitterbug cell phones and medical alert devices designed for older customers. Buying GreatCall (the company behind Jitterbug) allows Best Buy to expand its customer base overnight. Best Buy is gambling that if it can attract older customers, it might be able to position itself as […]
age-friendly
Financial abuse is the second-most common form of elder abuse
While some banks have made efforts to become more age-friendly, they need to do more to prevent elder financial abuse. Although the finding that elder financial abuse is the second-most common form of elder abuse after physical abuse, came from a 1981 report, now 40 years later, financial abuse and fraud continue to cost older Americans […]
Could older consumers steal the Meal Kit business?
The Meal Kit business has been exploding since 2007 primarily among younger, time-sensitive consumers, but surely different benefits meet the needs of an older consumer too? Estimated to soon be worth between $3 billion and $5 billion a Meal Kit service provides pre-portioned ingredients for a number of meals every week. The customer can then […]
5 lessons healthcare can learn about ageing from general business
I was recently invited to deliver a keynote address about ageing and healthcare to a group of 400 medical specialists. A tough crowd and a big challenge. My first reaction was ‘What on God’s green earth can specialists learn about ageing from a businessman?‘. This became the title of my address. The thing is, nobody is prepared […]
Ageing skiers and climate change; a double blow for winter sports
Ageing skiers are gradually and inevitably giving up the sport. The problem is that the numbers are not being made up fast enough by younger skiers. Demographics plus the impact of global warming, pose a dual threat to the skiing industry. According to this article in the Economist magazine, the number of skier-days (visits to […]
Buying Grandparents tech gadgets for Christmas? Think first.
It’s almost inevitable that tech gadgets will feature on a Christmas list these days. But when buying for older people, you need to think more carefully. The old joke about buying a drill kit for the wife’s birthday applies equally when buying for parents and grandparents. Are we buying because WE think the device is […]
Struggling to find the word to define older people
Apparently, Japan’s 60-somethings don’t like to be called ‘seniors’ yet in other parts of the world, this is the best of a bad bunch of classifiers. According to a study by a research arm of advertising agency Hakuhodo, nearly 90% of respondents in that age bracket — which includes the baby boomers who took part in […]
Demographic marketing has become irrelevant in China; Research
Demographic marketing is dead. Long live psychographics! This has been a constant theme of my thinking for the past 5 years and it is now confirmed to be true even in the exploding market of China. Today Chinese people are far less siloed by age, cohort or region according to research conducted by advertising company […]
Gillette tackles product design for the ageing consumer, actually for their caregivers
Gillette has designed a razor solely for assisted shaving. It’s called Treo. As caregivers are often adult children in their fifties and above, I wondered if this product was designed with the user and the receiver in mind? While there is a specific page dedicated to the Treo on the Gillette website, when I searched […]
Hearing-aids will become easier to buy. But will they be easy to use?
My brother-in-law suffered hearing loss attributed to years of working close to the squeal of a dentists drill. But he refused to wear a hearing-aid because of what others might think of him. In the USA, about 48 million people (20% of the population) have hearing loss in at least one ear, but just 14% […]
