Perspectives

GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT!

Retirees need to spend wisely. But even products typically thought to be for younger consumers will sell big if adapted appropriately for choosy seniors.

When asked if retirees are reluctant buyers, Christa Höhs says, “Our generation invented consumerism.” The 68-year-old former model opened her own senior modeling agency in Munich, Germany, and now supplies advertisers with faces that speak to an older audience.

Surrounded by photos of chic, gray-haired models, Höhs says, “Grannies with glasses and grey buns don’t exist anymore.” Not only are older people healthy and active, they are experienced consumers with time to check up on product promises. Finance, automotive and pharma industries are beginning to understand what Höhs has been preaching: “To reach out to these customers, be honest and lay your facts out on the table.”

“We were just havin’ fun,” says Joe Breezer about what inspires his bike designs. That fun comes from creating bicycles that meet a rider’s needs. In the 1970s he fitted cyclists with wheels built for mountains. His customers today, aging as he is, want to keep riding but in comfort. Joe Breezer never set out to service the senior market. But he considered what people – many of them active boomers who have time and want to stay fit – need to run errands by bike. Easy step through frames, wide comfortable seats and plenty of baskets are the usual for grandma bicycles. But a Breezer bike is designed for action as well. A boomer himself, Breezer sees no retiring from mobility. It is a part of life, just like eating and breathing.

CEO of Sweden’s electronics firm Doro, Jerome Arnaud says seniors spend, but focus on what is useful or pleasant – and want unnecessary complexity removed. To succeed with these buyers, “You need to think about what is essential, what eases life, what is comfortable.” People over 65 are uncomfortable with technology. “But this is of course due to the fact that most new electronic products are not designed for them,” argues Arnaud. If you cannot easily use a keypad, read a display or catch the complexity of a menu, why buy the product? Winning loyal older customers – and design awards too – Doro provides devices, such as large-display mobile phones, that let seniors keep doing what they do in spite of aging.

Published by PROJECT M in September 2009

(Photos: private; AP Photo/Jockel Finck, Doro PR)