If there was ever a golden age in which mass marketing was all companies needed to reach homogenous markets and predictable consumers, it is long gone. Traditional brand management systems, pioneered by Procter & Gamble, were very successful in the 1950s and 1960s. Theodore Levitt, emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School, pushed the idea of the virtues of mass marketing to new heights in his famous 1983 article, “The Globalization of Markets.” In it, he wrote: “Different cultural preferences, national tastes . . . and business institutions are vestiges of the past . . . Everywhere everything gets more and more like everything else as the world’s preference structure is relentlessly homogenized.”15 But the world has not become what Levitt envisioned. Rather, tastes have become more fragmented. Worldwide, people are increasingly spending their money in ways that reflect their individual values, which, in turn, are embedded in their respective cultures. As such, global strategies based on uniform tastes have not lived up to their early billings. Instead, companies are “going native” in terms of product expansion. Ford’s Mondeo sought to be a “global car.” But the car was only successful when adapted—in name and design—for local markets in Europe and North America. MTV relies primarily on local music and local administration for programming in Europe, Asia, and South America. Coca-Cola now has over 230 brands in more than 200 countries, and one of its top sellers in Japan is a canned coffee drink. In China, Volkswagen and General Motors have both introduced small family cars, the VW Santana and the Buick Sail. The Sail even features jumbo-sized cup holders big enough to accommodate the thick jars the Chinese use to hold their tea.

The sweeping changes in consumer demographics, demands, and perceptions of global brands simultaneously present new opportunities and challenges for retailers and suppliers. How have firms responded to these consumer changes? With global branding under siege, firms are exploring new ways to adapt. Corporations are attempting to bring consumers back into focus by identifying the attitudes, needs, and values underlying different age brackets, income levels, and ethnic groups.

For instance, companies are increasingly targeting senior citizens in advanced markets who—after being tied down by jobs and child-rearing— hunger for experiences that were denied them in their youth. Healthier and wealthier than grandparents of generations past, the over-65 crowd seeks to flex both their minds and bodies. As Roger Heeler, professor of marketing at York University observes, it is dawning on the travel industry that not all elderly tourists “want to sit in a coach with 30 other seniors and two 20-year-old guides and be shown the sights they shouldn’t miss before they pass from the mortal coil.” The Canada-based Eldertreks was one of the first companies to adapt to the senior travel market by offering people 50 years and older small-group adventures—such as camel trips through Mongolia—in more than 50 countries. Elderly travelers are also fuelling a growing field of “study travel,” sponsored by professional organizations, zoos, universities, and museums.

Similarly, DeBeers marketed its new line of three-stone jewelry to elderly women in Japan by appealing to a similar desire for personal journey and experience. Marketing research found that, among elderly women, purchases of upscale products were largely driven by desires for self-improvement. The company’s campaign emphasized that the threestone jewelry represented the past, present, and future of a woman’s personal journey. DeBeers’ marketing arm, the Diamond Trading Company (DTC), launched print ads featuring women studying overseas, running a café, and taking up photography. “The market was about accumulation of past life, but also rediscovery [of themselves] and an ever-evolving journey. This was an emotional hook for us,” explains Peter Bromwitz, the account director at DTC’s ad agency J. Walter Thompson in Japan.

Indeed, senior citizen advocacy groups such as AARP and specialized marketing firms such as the San Francisco-based Age Wave are striving to convince companies and advertisers to dispense with the stereotype that the elderly are too set in their ways to explore new brands and products. “If that notion were real, I would be sitting here in Thom McCann shoes, have a Chevy Impala parked in my garage, be wearing a Timex watch, have brushed my teeth with Crest and, for a little arthritis in my shoulder, I would have taken St. Joseph aspirin,” complains Ken Dychtwald, the president at Age Wave. “All of which is ridiculous,” he adds. “There’s not one product that I use today that I was using in my late teens.”

Even though young people tend to be the first to buy new products, consumers over 50 may also do so. The Global Consumer Innovation Study, which links consumer personality traits to a variety of demographic and adoption factors, shows that about 12 percent of consumers 50 and over are innovators or early adopters of new products, especially high-tech products. The study was cosponsored by A.T. Kearney, the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, and the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University. Perhaps the most self-defeating assumption among marketers is the belief that the elderly are technophobes wary about using the Internet for any purpose beyond sending e-mails to the grandkids. In truth, a rising number of “silver surfers” are reaching for the computer mouse.

Nielsen/Net Ratings reports that senior citizens are the fastest growing age group online in the United States, surging 25 percent per year to 9.6 million web surfers from home and work in October 2003.20 In the United Kingdom, this age bracket represents 12 percent of all online users.  

A 2002 survey found that 52 percent of older consumers are using the web to make purchases, while 38 percent research stocks and check investments.22 Banks have begun actively courting this group of consumers, making them aware of the advantages of online services. As more and more retirees take to the road, they appreciate the convenience of being able to monitor their finances and pay their credit card bills from a cyber café in Venice or Las Vegas.