Purchasing Habits and Market Potentialities of the Older Consumer

Market structures have always been dynamic, changing in emphasis as one segment or another enlarged or decreased. In the twentieth century an especially rapid change in the basic age distribution has taken place. Within the past few years a change in age distribution has resulted from the rapid growth of that segment of the population which is 65 years of age and older. During the past sixty years, the number of persons in this age group has increased more than fifty per cent. In 1900, only 4.1 per cent of the entire population of the United States were sixty-five years of age or older.' In 196o, 9.2 per cent of the population were in this age group. When the population within this age stratum was small, marketers naturally were unconcerned. With relative scarcity of products, especially during and after war periods, there was little reason for marketers to pay attention to the characteristics of individual markets. Today, marketers face a buyers' market where attention to the needs and desires of each market segment may be meaningful. Now that the population 65 years of age and older has increased with such rapidity, and to such proportions, it is attracting attention, but because this is a new market and because of the lack of information about it, marketers have tended to do nothing. In order to obtain informatioii about the marketing characteristics of this enlarged older population, a sample of the population of Portland, Oregon, was selected and interviews were conducted to obtain information revealing certain attitudes and buying patterns of this population. This article summarizes the major findings of that study3