Book Review

Marketing to the ageing consumer: The secrets to building an age friendly business
Dick Stroud and Kim Walker London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 264pp., d19.99, ISBN: 978-0230378193 Journal of Marketing Analytics (2013) 1, 6162. doi:10.1057/jma.2012.3

Ageing is a process that is accompanied by many physical problems. In order to run a successful business, these problems have to be taken into account. This is the main theme of the new book on ageing by Dick Stroud and Kim Walker. It treats exhaustively the decline of the ageing mind, body and senses and their impact on consumer behaviour. To analyze this impact, the authors use the consumer journey from becoming aware of a product to its (regular) use as a central concept. During the journey, the consumer experiences several touchpoints by which a company interfaces the outside world. Such touchpoints may be advertising, parking space in the environment of the outlet, understanding of sales staff, packaging, the user friendliness of the product itself, user support and so on. The majority of the book is a, rather depressing but well documented, account of physical inconveniences that are linked to ageing, and the consequences they should have for the touchpoints during the consumer journey. An example is the lesser known fact that the sensitivity of the skin declines. As a consequence it is recommended that hot water taps should be limited in the temperature of the water they dispense. The size, spacing and prole of buttons of electronic devices should accommodate the lesser sense of touch. When smooth surfaces are part of the controls of a device, for example, a tablet computer or a smartphone, they should be designed in such a way that it leaves sufcient room for

errors by the user. In later chapters, this analysis is repeated for the working environment and the public sector. How should employers behave to be age friendly for their employees and the governments behave to be age friendly for their citizens? For many companies, this is a very useful book. It contains many facts which are not very well known. Moreover, it gives well known facts of which the consequences are seldom realized. Such a well known fact is that hearing deteriorates with age, but the consequences for noise levels in retail stores or restaurants are often overlooked. However, the book is one sided in the sense that it conceives ageing people more or less as robots, of which the parts gradually wear out. The book describes the world in which these robots can still keep on functioning. The fact that aging people also have a psyche, emotions, goals, a sense of purpose and a changing feeling about the meaning of life is ignored. This in itself is no criticism; on the contrary, it gives the book focus. By buying the book you obtain a comprehensive guide of the physical inconveniences of ageing and their consequences for the private and the public sector. However, the title is wrong. This is no book about marketing but about creating an age friendly world. Sometimes marketing is involved, sometimes not. Moreover, marketing cannot ignore the psychological side of the consumer. So the subtitle The Secrets to Building an Age Friendly Business would make a better title, but, given the chapters on work and

& 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2050-3318

Journal of Marketing Analytics Vol. 1, 1, 6162

www.palgrave-journals.com/jma/

Book Review

government, Building an age friendly environment would describe the contents even better. The reason for leaving out psychology and not choosing the most adequate title probably is the fact that the authors have something to sell. They developed an audit system for age friendliness, which is described rather extensively in the book. In itself, there seems little wrong with this. It probably is well designed and the authors are competent enough to use it to improve businesses. However, it looks as if the authors, when the

book was nished, have asked themselves how do we frame the contents such that we sell it as much as possible?. As a result, the authors, marketing experts, have marketed their very useful book not completely to the right target group. The right target group consists primarily of policymakers and not marketeers.

Dirk Sikkel University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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& 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2050-3318

Journal of Marketing Analytics Vol. 1, 1, 6162