With this book, organizations can develop effective marketing strategies for serving the older consumer market. Assistance is provided in the form of information and recommendations for marketing action. Existing knowledge is summarized and additional information from a large-scale study is presented to fill gaps in existing knowledge. Using the strategic framework familiar to marketers, information is organized and presented as it may apply to specific stages in the strategic marketing process; key issues are raised and information is presented to address them. Intended for the busy marketer who needs access to state-of-the art knowledge and its implications for marketing strategy development, the book includes information on the mature market, market segmentation and market targeting, as well as analysis of older consumers' behavior with respect to areas of the strategic marketing process.

The book begins with information relevant to the analysis of the mature market, such as size and wealth, and how this market differs from younger consumer groups. Next, it presents information useful in analyzing opportunities that exist within this market in the form of unfilled needs, as well as information related to segmentation and target marketing. Analysis of market behavior is presented next, focusing on financial and consumption lifestyles. The bulk of the information presented in this book is on consumers' orientations toward business offerings and strategies, focusing on analyses of older consumer responses in all areas of the marketing mix--i.e., new product development, pricing, distribution and promotion, and recommending specific courses of action. Finally, an effort is made to summarize the information, using a strategic marketing framework, and to make recommendations on how to market to older consumers.

The mature consumer market is highly heterogeneous, and to reach it most effectively marketers must fit different marketing strategies to different market subsegments. Here is a marketing tool that can not only help segment the market, but target it successfully. Dr. Moschis's market segmentation model is based on state-of-the-art knowledge and methodology. It shows marketers how to develop industry-specific marketing strategy, and demonstrates why this approach works. That, plus the fact that Dr. Moschis's model can be integrated into other databases to enhance their value, makes his book especially useful to marketing professionals, and to students and teachers of marketing on the graduate level.

Gerontographics is a life-stage model developed to help marketers to better understand the heterogeneous older consumer market. Dr. Moschis points out that the model is unique, and different from other models of older consumer behavior in several ways. First, it is built on state-of-the-art knowledge drawn from various disciplines. Instead of relying on a single approach to or assumption about human behavior, it takes into account a wide range of factors and approaches. Second, the model was tested and validated using multiple methods. Not only is it the result of empirical methods, but it also reflects current thinking among consumer researchers on how to study behavior. Third, because the marketplace is dynamic, the life-stage model is flexible. It accommodates changes over time, to reflect changes in the environment and in people, and the emergence of new types of consumers. Finally, the model is directly linked to marketing strategies. It suggests specific courses of marketing action an organization should take to secure better results.

Marketers interested in designing effective strategies to tap the increasingly lucrative mature market presently must look for relevant information in several disciplines and need the background to translate it into a decision-making framework. This book systematically organizes information scattered among various fields of scientific inquiry; it interprets and presents information, making it easier for the busy decision maker to find out how older consumers behave and why. By presenting and interpreting relevant information in a marketing decision-making context, the book provides the bases for developing effective marketing strategies.

Next, the author discusses both specific and general aspects of behavior that have implications for marketing strategy. Specifically, the book helps the reader understand how changes in mental processes in late life might affect the way an older person responds to marketing stimuli, and how lifestyles of mature persons can form the bases for designing effective marketing strategies. Finally, the author discusses specific aspects of older consumers' consumption and behavior in the marketplace, including mass media use, expenditure and consumption patterns, shopping habits, product/service acquisition process, as well as behaviors following purchase. At the end of each chapter, the author outlines several implications of the material presented that will be of interest to marketers, retailers, advertisers, social workers, public policy makers, and students of human behavior. The book ends by summarizing key points, drawing conclusions, and making recommendations to various groups interested in serving the mature market. The results of hundreds of studies are reviewed and presented in such a way that they can be used by practitioners. The book begins with an examination of the older consumer market and its characteristics. Age-related changes in late life and theoretical explanations for them are discussed next to help the reader understand human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular.

The buying habits of baby boomers really do differ from those of their parents. The authors show how marketers can use each group's consumption patterns to reach both markets most effectively. Another insight: buying habits of these groups differ according to the product or service offered. By analyzing each cohort's buying habits in various purchasing situations, the book dramatizes the need for customized marketing strategies. Based on two national surveys conducted by the Center for Mature Studies, Georgia State University, the book will be essential for marketing professionals and their academic colleagues.

Moschis and his coauthors concentrate on food products, apparel, footwear, drugs and cosmetics, housing, technology products and telecommunications services, health care, travel and leisure, and financial and insurance services. They cover preferences for selected products and services, patronage habits, methods of purchasing, motives for preferences for specific brands and services and for payment methods, and reasons for buying direct. Each chapter addresses a specific product or service category and includes analyses of survey respondents by demographic and lifestyle characteristics and media use habits. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of their research and the ways in which it will lead marketers to design more effective strategies, not only today but in the future.