Brand Choice Among Oldre Consumers

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MARK D. UNCLES

AND

ANDREW S. C. EHRENBERG

BRAND CHOICE

AMONG

OLDER CONSUMERS

MARK D. UNCLES is assistanlprolessor ot marketing al theLondon Business S cftool,London. England His areas otresearch include retail choicemodels, branding, and dataanalysis He regularly speaks,writes, and consults on thesesubjects.

'\rANDREW S. C. EHRENBERGis professor ot marketing anddirector of the Centre tor fylar-keting and Communication aithe London Business School,London, England He has heldvarious other academic ap-poinlments in Great Britain andIhe United States and hasspent 15 years m industry. Hehas pubiished very widely andis a frequent speaker and ac-tive consuitant on both sidesof the Atiantic.

This paper is based on an earlier reportfor CBS. We are indebted to MRCA foraccess to their data for U. S. householdsand Dr. Tim Lamb for access to AGB

data.

Aquestion in advertisingpolicy is whether olderconsumers spread their

purchases of frequently-boughtpackaged goods among far fewerbrands than do youngerconsumers.

One view is that older con-sumers become set in their waysbecause of habit, a reluctance tochange, or limited spendingpower. On this view it wouldboth be difficult to persuadeolder consumers to switch toother brands and unnecessary toreinforce their existing pur-chasing behavior because theyremain loyal anyway—in whichcase it would be better to directthe advertising message at more

impressionable age groups. But isit actually the case that olderconsumers are so habitual intheir behavior that they restrictthemselves to fewer brands?

With over a fifth of the U. S.population aged 55 or over, andthe number set to grow to 60million by the end of the century,the so-called "greying baby-boomers" and "empty nesters"will come to have a greater im-

pact on the demand for goodsand services. Here we report onone aspect: the number of dif-ferent brands bought by olderand younger U. 5. households(defined by the "housewife"being aged 55 and over, or 54 orless) for a range of packaged gro-cery products. While the pur-chase record is typically kept bythe wife, it reflects total house-hold purchases. We also look atthe overall rates at which these

two age groups buy the products.The data cover a year's pur-

chasing records from MRCA'snational consumer panel in themid 1980s, for seven variedproduct categories, ranging from"take-home" soft drinks to air

fresheners, with sample sizes ofabout 6,000 (only 3,000 forcoffee). The value of the presentresults is that they cover week-by-week purchasing for a varietyof products nationally and withlarge samples (compared, for ex-ample, with the more limited re-sults reported by Schewe, 1985).This provides a norm for as-sessing the effects of age onbrand choice.

Results

Do older households have nar-rower brand repertoires? FromTable 1 we see that those whobuy a product tend to buy some-what fewer different brands thanyounger households over thecourse of a year, for most of theseven products covered. Thus,older households buy under sixdifferent brands of take-home

soft drinks compared with almoseight different brands bought bythe average younger household(with much the same differencefor subdivisions such as carbon-ated and fruit drinks). However,the differences are small—theaverages for the two age groupsbeing 3.2 and 2.7 brands—andfor both ground and instantcoffee oider households buy fractionally more brands. These re-sults show that older household



B R A N D C H CM C

Table 1

The Average Number of BrandsBought (by Age of Housewife)

The average numberof brands bought

per buying householdin 12 months

Productcategory

Age of housewife

54 or iess 55

Soft drinks

RTE cereals

Coffee

Saiad dressings

Toothpaste

Detergents

Air fresheners

Average

7.6

3.8

3.0

2,5

2.2

1,6

1.7

3.2

5.8

3.0

3,3

2.2

1.8

1-4 ,

1.6^

brand choice for packaged goodsis not radically narrou^er. It is nota case of older householdschoosing to buy just one pre-ferred brand or that their choiceis restricted by limited income orimmobility.

It therefore seems that the pro-pensity to buy a varied repertoireof fmcg brands does not changewith age among healthier, moreactive older families (see alsoReinske, 1964). The handicappedand frail will be underrepre-sented in the data analyzed here,but we found no difference inbrand choice for the yet oidersubgroup of households withwives aged 65, despite most of

these having retired and alteredtheir lifestyle.

The somewhat smaller numberof brands bought by older house-holds is due in part to thembuying less often—on averageabout 13 purchases during theyear across the 7 products, com-pared with almost 18 purchasesamong younger households (seeTable 2).

Using these purchasing rates

we can successfully predict the

number of brands bought as wellas many other measures of buyerbehavior. The underlying theoryto do this has been widely ap-plied in studies of packagedgoods (as fully described in

Ehrenberg, 1988). The resultingpredictions are consistent withthe observed behavior of both agegroups. This indicates that herealso there is nothing abnormalabout either of them.

A further theoretical twist isthat given a sufficiently long timeperiod, older households wouldbuy as often; across our list ofproducts it would take them onaverage 17 months to achieve the

same rates of purchasing as ayounger household does in ayear. The findings are that inthese longer periods, olderhouseholds then have as wide arepertoire of brands as doyounger ones (see Goddard,1978, for a discussion of thisprinciple).

The fact that older householdsbuy somewhat less often (or takesomewhat longer to buy as often)

is due in turn to their being a

Table 2

The Average Number ofPurchases in the Yearper Household

The average numberof purchases in

buying householdsin 12 months

Product

category

Age of housewife

54 or less 55 f

Sof t drinks

RTE cereals

Coffee

Salad dressings

Toothpaste

Detergents

Air fresheners

Average

65

28

12

8

6

3

3

18

46

17

12

7

4

3

3

13

good deal smaller (on averageabout 1.9 persons, as against 3.5in younger households). On a pperson basis, Table 3 shows thaolder households in fact makemore purchases, some seven

averaged across the product categories versus about five amongyounger households. Compara-tively, coffee is heavily bought,though even sales of soft drinksare, if anything, high (theaverage buyer will purchasetake-home soft drinks once ever2 or 3 weeks, leading to the an-nual rates of about 20 cans forthe average person, young orold, throughout the United

States).

Table 3

The Average Number ofPurchases in the Year per Capit

The average numbe

of purchases inbuying households

in 12 monthsper capita

Product

category

Age of housewife

54 or less 55

Soft drinks

RTE cereals

Coffee

Salad dressings

Toothpaste

Detergents

Air fresheners

Average

19.0

7,9

3.4

2.2

1.6

1,0

.9

5.1

25.

9.

6,

3.

2,

1,

1.

7.

Older households spend abou20 percent less per purchase forsoft drinks and RTE cereals (bychoosing smaller or fewer packs)but not in the case of the otherfive products. So, even in termsof spending, older householdsmight spend somewhat more peperson than younger ones.

So far we have compared the

numbers of brands bought and



B R A N D CH O I C E

rates of buying each productamong those households whobought the product at all duringthe year. But what proportions ofolder and younger householdsare in the market for these

relatively little difference betweenthese age groups. Somewhatolder households buy coffee(mainly instant), while for threeproducts (salad dressings, tooth-paste, and detergents) the annualpenetration among older house-holds is roughly a fifth lower. Butwith some 50 million people inthe older age group in the UnitedStates, all the markets studied

here remain substantial (the

Table 4

Buyers of the Product CategoryThe percentage ofhouseholds buying

the productin the year

Age of housewife

Product

category

54 or less 55 +

Soft drinks

RTE cereals

Coffee

Salad dressings

Toothpaste

Detergents

Air fresheners

Average

99

94

88

83

86

50

44

78

98

90

96

70

69

38

41

72

analogy is with a region whereabsolute volume of sales may

be somewhat less yet the localmarket is sufficiently large that amanager would not be dis-courged from trading there).

It might be that older shoppersare restricted—whether bychoice, necessity, or inertia—intheir access to shops (seeLumpkin cf ai , 1985). The MRCAdata allow us to check this, and

here again we found no age dif-

ference. For buyers of instantcoffee, for example, about a fifthrestricted themselves to one storein the year but equally so amongolder and younger households.In contrast, the average shopper

of instant coffee at a given chainfulfilled as mu ch as tw o-th irds ofhis or her annual instant coffeerequirements at other chains. Thiswas again equally so for both agegroups and is in line with otheranalyses of store choice (such asUncles and Ehrenberg, 1988).

Discussion

The range of frequently-bought

products that we have been ableto cover here can only be indica-tive, although we would expectto see similar results for all butthe most peculiarly age-relatedgoods (many of which are notbought often in any case). Mar-keting practitioners will have tocheck the patterns for their ownspecific products, but now theycan do so with the knowledgethat older households do notnecessarily restrict their brand

choice.We can start this process of

generalization here by reportingfigures from some follow-up tab-ulations for a different range ofpackaged goods sold in theUnited Kingdom. The results areremarkably similar to those re-ported for the United States inTables 1 to 4. In particular, theaverage number of brandsbought in a year is again only

fractionally smaller among thehouseholds aged 55+ (4.4) thanthe younger ones (5.1). And theolder households, being smaller,buy about 25 percent less often(as shown in Table 2). But on aper person basis, we see fromTable 5 that older households inthe United Kingdom—like theirAmerican counterparts—are esti-mated to make rather more pur-chases (18 on average across the

5 product categories compared to

Table 5

The Average Number ofPurchases in the Yearper Capita*

The average number

of purchases inbuying householdsin the yearper capita

Age of housewife

Productcategory

Wrapped bread

Yellow fats

Washing powder

Instant coffee

Dent i f r ice

Average

54 or less

33.0

21.0

6.3

4.9

2.8

14.0

55 +

39.0

34.0

6.5

6.1

3.0

18,0

• U.K. data from AGB for 1988,

14 among younger households).This, together with other U.K.evidence (for example, Reader'sDigest, 1989), reinforces our viewof the buyer behavior of olderpeople in the United States.

These findings support the

general view that those olderconsumers who stay active, bothmentally and physically, havesimilar requirements and desiresas those who are much younger(Neugarten, 1982; Langer, 1982),and they are quite prepared tospend their money to meet thesedesires (Buck, 1990). It is onlyamong the "old-old" that shop-ping habits become localized andlimited, and this behavior usually

has more to do with immobilitythan voluntary choice (Rowles,1978).

Even where the household'sproduct requirements are dif-ferent we find that in all otherrespects buying conforms tosome common patterns. Thus,toothpaste is not on the shoppingiist for about 30 percent of olderhouseholds (for dental reasons),but despite the absolute number

of buyers being lower the be-



B K A \ D C H O I C E

havior of the majority who dobuy is highly similar to other agegroups (as shown in Tables 1 to4) . Then, again, the demand forsome brands of RTE cereals isless where there are no children,

but this is not the case for mostbrands even in the RTE cerealsmarket. These effects are less areflection of any inflexibility ofbrand choice behavior as merelythe more limited product needsof smaller households—the ef-fects of "empty nesting" ratherthan "greying."

Had there been striking differ-ences between each age groupthe tactical response by the ad-

vertiser might have been to targetparticular n iche m arkets. As it is,ads with mass appeal are aslikely to be appropriate for com-municating with the "young-old"as they are for reaching youngerbuyers. This will not only influ-ence the selection of media andthe nature of the campaign(Ehrenberg, 1974; Rossiter andPercy, 1987), it might also affectthe way older people are de-picted in ads (Greco, 1988; Ursicetai, 1986). Moreover, ideasabout modifying products tomeet what are often thought tobe the special needs of olderbuyers—such as having moresalt-free Iow~cholesterol food,clear and simple labels, andsingle-serving portions— areprobably worth doing in theirown right for the benefit of allconsumers.

What we have been able toshow here is that, where adver-tising is needed to support abrand, e.g., to reinforce pastpurchasing, to keep it in thebuyer's repertoire, to ensure it is"top of the mind," and to stimu-late repeat-buying, it must besustained just as much to reacholder consumers as any othermass market. •

References

Buck, S. 55 + : Exploring a GoldenBusiness Opportunity. Maiden-head, England: McGraw-Hill,1990.

Ehrenberg, A. S. G. "RepetitiveAdvertising and the Consumer."fourna} of Advertising Research 14,2 (1974): 25- 34 .

. Repeat-Buying: Facts,Theory and Applications, 2nd ed.London; Griffin, 1988.

Goddard, J. Components of BrandPopularity. Unpublished Ph.D.thesis. University of London,1978.

Greco, A. J. "The Elderly asCommunicators: Perceptions ofAdvertising Practitioners."journal of Advertising Research 28 ,3 (1988): 39-46.

Langer, J. Consumers in Transition:In-Depth Investigations of Changing

Lifestyles. AMA ManagementBriefing, AMA Publications Divi-sion. New York: American Mar-keting Association, 1982.

Lumpkin, J. R.; B. A. Greenberg;and J. L. Goidstucker. "Market-place Models of the Elderly: De-terminant Attributes and StoreChoice." journal of Retailing 61, 2(1985): 75-105.

Neugarten, B. I. Age or Need?Public Policies for Older People.Sage Focus Edition, Vol. 59. Bev-erly Hills, CA: Sage Publications,1982.

Reader's Digest. "Are th e Middle-

aged More Brand Loyal Than theYoung?" Research Digest 8.London: Reader's Digest, 1989.

Reinecke, J. A. "The 'Older'Market: Fact or Fiction?" journaof Marketing 28 (1964): 60-64.

Rossiter, John, and Larry PercyAdvertising an d Promotion Man

ment, Ne w York: McGraw-Hiili 1987.

Rowles, G. D. Prisoners of SpaExploring the Geographical Expence of Older People. WestviewPress, 1978.

Schewe, C. D., ed. The ElderlyMarket: Selected Readings. ChicIL: American Marketing Association, 1985.

Uncles, Mark D., and AndrewS. C. Ehrenberg. "Patterns ofstore choice: new evidence fromthe USA." In Store Choice, StorLocation an d Market Analysis, NWrigley, ed. London: Routledge1988.

Ursic, A. C ; M. L. Ursic; andV. L. Ursic. "A LongitudinalStudy of the Use of the Elderly in

Magazine Advertising." journalConsumer Research 13 (1986):131-33.

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Brand Choice Among Oldre Consumers

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