Mark Beasley, of rhc advantage, the mature marketing agency, reviews ‘Marketing to the Ageing Consumer - the Secrets to Building an Age Friendly Business’ by Dick Stroud and Kim Walker (Palgrave & MacMillan).
1. Introducing the book: the first to cover an important subject
To get straight to the point: the ‘secrets to building an age friendly business’ revealed in this book depend upon understanding how the ageing of consumers’ minds, bodies and senses determine the products they purchase. This book is important because, claim the publishers, this subject has not previously been examined in any detail. In fact, it is stated that it is the ‘first and most comprehensive’ account of this subject – but let me stop right there. Because if it is the first, then by definition it will surely also be the most comprehensive! Unfortunately, clumsy stylistic errors of this sort throughout the book tend to get in the way of what is otherwise an authoritative text.
That said, it is almost impossible to review this book in anything other than positive terms. The broad subject area – that of marketing and the ageing population – is an important one, to which my business (rhcadvantage.co.uk) has a shared interest and commitment. We are therefore pre-disposed towards supporting anything which promotes it. What’s more, this book breaks new ground by focusing on the need for businesses to focus on the unique physical needs of older people. The subject of marketing communications for ‘older people’ has received some attention over the years, but as Stroud and Walker point out, there are many more important factors to be considered first.
The reviewers task is also hampered by the long list of the Great and Good (featured in the first two pages of the book), all of whom endorse the book. What’s more, the authors themselves are experienced and highly-respected authorities on this subject. ‘Critic beware’ is the message!
So, all of this makes it almost impossible to review this book in anything other than positive terms.
Despite that, I concluded that inside this 240 page book, a concise and much better-written article is waiting to get out. Either that, or the breadth and depth of the subject matter (and the obvious research and knowledge of the authors) deserve a much longer and more substantial book. In other words, the main limitation of the book is the format: perhaps the market or the publishers dictate the length.
To support my case, I would argue that the context which gives the subject matter of the book such significance – ageing populations and the failure of business to address the challenges and opportunities that they present – is given insufficient weight. Perhaps the authors feel that everyone already knows this: an assumption with which I disagree. By contrast, too much attention is given to unnecessary ‘scientific’ detail. It is important to know about the physiological aspects of ageing and what the business implications are, but do we really need to know quite so much of the medical background ? The authors state that they have aimed to focus ‘on the business rather than the science of ageing’ but I believe they might want to address this balance.
2. Aims and key concepts
So what exactly is the book setting out to do? This is best explained by the sub-title shown above (‘the secrets to building an age-friendly business’). The best statement of the authors’ intentions that I can otherwise find is the less than inspiring statement that they aim to provide ‘knowledge and techniques to help marketers benefit from a new dimension of change that will progressively affect all areas of their work’. In other words, their aim is to help marketers address, and benefit from, continued population ageing. This is certainly a laudable objective. However, should the audience be confined to marketers, who seldom control or even influence all aspects of a business?
In doing this, the book depends upon three important concepts. The first is that population ageing is of crucial significance to business. In fact, the authors claim that “this is a phenomenon which will soon equal sustainability as a global trend that the corporate world must understand and devise policies to embrace”. I do not think that this important concept is sufficiently developed or substantiated – yet the significance of everything that follows depends upon it.
Second, it is assumed that it is possible and indeed desirable to attain a position of what the authors call ‘age friendliness’, a concept which is defined as ‘an environment in which the unique physical needs of older people are satisfied in a way that is natural and beneficial for all ages.’ If you’re looking for specific definition and measurement of this rather nebulous concept, you’re in the right place. Fortuitously, the authors’ consulting business (which this book is presumably intended to promote) does just this, some of which is explained in the book.
The final concept is that the key to age friendliness is greater understanding of physical (or physiological – both terms are used) ageing and how this affects all customer touchpoints. This subject has been neglected, claim the authors, and is the key to reaching the nirvana of age friendliness.
3. Structure and content
Part one: the discipline of marketing to older people The book can be divided into four parts, although this is not made as clear as it might be. The first part gives a very brief overview of the history and scope of the ‘discipline’ of marketing to older people, although how, where and to what extent this ‘discipline’ is codified or indeed practised is not explained. The authors, understandably, are keen to get to the point of the book, but the result of this brevity is that some important subject matter is compressed a little too much. Most people in business do not know this stuff, I would suggest, but the significance of the rest of the book depends upon it.
This brevity also means that some fundamental points are reduced to un-substantiated assertions. To take one example, it is stated that the starting point is ‘to address the paradox of why a large group of wealthy people attracts so little attention from the marketing community’ – a significant point, which to some extent underpins the very existence of this book. However, no evidence is given to support it (possibly because there isn’t any: much as we might like there to be).
Part two: physiological ageingThe second section of the book examines the intricacies of physiological ageing and the business opportunities they present. This section accounts for 50% (120 pages) of the book and it is no small achievement to bring all of this information together. Looking at mind, body and senses, one is reminded of just how much there is to go wrong!
A lot of secondary research was clearly carried out by the authors and it is well-structured and explained. However, the book does provide rather too much detailed scientific data for this reader. In fact, it often seems more like a biology textbook than a marketing text, with diagrams of skeletons, tables of medical data and impenetrable sentences such as: ‘the somasensory systems affect all of those touchpoints that are reliant, for their successful operation, on the body’s sensitivity to threshold levels of vibration, pressure or temperature.’ The point is made: the authors have done their homework – but do we need to have our noses rubbed in it quite so often?
This ‘science bit’ seems to be at the expense of examining attitudes and behaviour regarding physiological ageing. These do matter, I would suggest: I like to turn up the TV; you have the TV on too loud; he has hearing impairment. Despite this niggle, this section of the book is full of information and insights unlikely to be found in any other marketing text and the underlying point is well made.
Part three: age-friendliness - what it is and how to get someThe third section of the book explains the concept of age-friendliness and how it is measured. This provides some interesting topics – for example, the surprising age-friendliness of Apple, which suggests that the default setting for good business and good product design is age neutral. A process for developing an age-friendly strategy is considered and the reasons why this has not yet been embraced by many companies are given. While these all ring true, this perhaps has as much to do with the well-documented problems associated with planning and executing any sort of long-term strategic change.
This section of the book goes on to introduce a methodology for strategy development – the authors’ own AF (Age-Friendly) Audit toolset. This is claimed to be a thorough evaluation based upon an age-friendly model of 24 physiological effects of ageing across over 200 customer touchpoints. I do not propose to attempt a critique of this – in fact, I would love to know more. However, I am aware that such approaches work in other areas and respect the capabilities and experience of the authors.
Part four: implementing an age-friendly strategyThe final – and quite short – part of the book examines why companies should adopt an age-friendly strategy and what the broader business and societal implications are. Chapter 10 (creating an age-friendly strategy) is particularly well-written and well-argued and stands in its own right as being worthy of wider dissemination at board-level. If you read one chapter, read this one. Finally, the last chapter stresses that the ageing population is a ‘mega-trend’ that must be addressed, and examines the future of age-friendliness. This part of the book would form the basis of an excellent article for the Harvard Business Review.
4. To what extent does the book achieve its aims?
As stated earlier, we support any book which raises the important issues that this book does. The book represents a new direction in the (limited) literature on this subject and – like any book - has strengths and weaknesses. I would like to have seen more of the high level argument in the closing chapters and a lot less of the ‘A level biology text book’ detail. However, the main weakness is the format: I am guessing that this book had to be of a certain size dictated by the publishers. This means, as I have said, that it is too long to be a hard-hitting polemic (as suggested by the final chapters), yet also too short to set out the full business case for considering this subject in the first place. Imperfect perhaps, but it introduces new subject matter and makes some important points.
Mark Beasley
31st January 2013
rhc advantage is a marketing agency which specialises in the mature (50+) market. We help our clients to gain better insights, plan more effective strategies and create more engaging brand communications
