Why We Buy (16 page)

It won't just be for the immobile that the retail landscape will have to change, either. Even ambulatory older shoppers can't bend or stretch like they used to. And they don't really want to—bending and stretching make them feel their age, which is the last thing they want to feel. At RadioShack, the slowest-selling batteries were for use in hearing aids, so the conventional wisdom dictated they should be stocked at the bottom of the freestanding “spinner” fixtures. Of course, who buys hearing aid batteries but old people, the shoppers least able to stoop? When the batteries were moved higher on the spinners, sales went up, and sales of the batteries that were moved to the bottom didn't drop at all. We looked at the women's couture floor of a New York department store and found a similar issue. Not surprisingly, many of the women who can afford these clothes are older and therefore tend to be of generous proportions. The designers, however, in order to keep
up their image, stock sizes 4 and 6 on the racks and keep sizes 14 and 16 in a back room somewhere, forcing the humiliated shopper to ask one of the painfully thin salesclerks to go and fetch her something a little roomier. Elsewhere in apparel a similar situation pertains: Racks and shelves of underwear or trousers are organized in size order, the smallest up top and the largest way down at the bottom—forcing the fattest and oldest customers to strain themselves, while making it easy on the young and the supple.

(Personally, I'd like to lead a revolt of tall shoppers, those of us who are forced to bend low at every ATM and water fountain in existence. We're getting taller as a populace, and older, too, meaning that bending will truly hurt in two or three decades.)

In supermarkets, products stocked too low or too high are virtually off-limits to the older shopper; it's just not worth the trouble, they sigh. I'll find it elsewhere. This is especially so with heavy items like cases of soft drinks or large boxes of detergent—if you can't just slide it off the shelf and into your cart, you won't buy it there. (In fact, for the sake of shoppers of all ages, bulky packages should be shelved at shopping-carttop height.) Remember our pet treats example from chapter 1? Making life easy on older shoppers not only sells goods, it engenders warm feelings among a group that is often badly served by retailers. The geezer who comes in for hearing-aid batteries and doesn't have to exert himself to get them will probably return when he needs to buy a cell phone or a computer.

Japan is one country that has made great strides in accommodating its aging population. In Japan, land is precious and the malls tend to go up rather than sprawl. In some malls, the escalators move very slowly, not to annoy the sprinting teenagers in the crowd, but in deference to Japan's aging customer base. Japan's largest mobile service provider, DoCoMo, has a senior-friendly phone with big buttons and oversized numerals. It bears asking again: Are we as remotely prepared in the U.S., or in Italy or Russia (two other countries with rapidly aging populations), for the same graying consumers? Our over-fifty population is increasingly unable to endure spatial uncertainty. Which is a fancy way of saying that in stores that cover more than thirty thousand
square feet, most graying consumers don't get a kick out of getting lost. Merchants would like their customers to get deliciously lost, not addled-and-simmering-and-ready-to-blow-their-tops lost.

Waiting areas are, or should be, another key concern for merchants and landlords. If your average senior knows she can walk a certain distance and find a place where she can sit, she's more likely to do just that. HEB, the Texas grocery store chain, recognizes that many Latino families enjoy shopping in multigenerational clusters. Having benches scattered through the store is both an act of kindness and guerilla marketing. Plus, any waiting area is a fantastic selling and communications point. Your audience is captive, ready to read any and all information you give them. You'll also score especially big points with elderly customers if you make your chairs easy to get into and out of. Those of us in our presenior years who are in positions of moderate influence have a fairly vested interest in preparing the universe for our own dotage. Now isn't too soon to take a hard look at older shoppers. Before Calvin Klein comes out with a line of designer adult diapers, we need to make our world a lot more senior-friendly.

One of the ongoing challenges in contemporary banking is getting older customers to use ATMs. The automated tellers can be intimidating if you're not already comfortable with interactive touch-screens and machine-speak. Senior citizens can be taught, but it shouldn't be by youngsters or officious junior VP wannabes; older customers prefer to be instructed by their contemporaries, all our surveys say—one older bank employee stationed by the teller lines can escort multitudes of senior customers to ATMs. It also helps to have ATMs within sight of the teller lines; if seniors can watch people use the machines, they lose some of their fearsomeness. Due to failing eyes and arthritic fingers, those ATMs will have to adapt, too—the buttons will have to become larger, as will the screens
and
the words on them. If the gains in economy made by self-serve are to be maintained, lots of machines will have to be redesigned for older hands and vision. The written directions and buttons on the stamp vending machines and do-it-yourself scales at the post office, for instance, are too small for the aged to manage easily. The same is true of the credit card reader and pump at the self-service gas
station line, the commuter train ticket machine and the check-in kiosk at the airport.

Tiny buttons and hooks on clothing—especially the inconvenient back closures on women's garments—will have to be replaced with simpler fasteners, like Velcro. Cell phone makers currently compete to see who can go smallest, but at some point the phone with the largest buttons and liquid crystal display will be most desirable, at least among older users. (That'll be at about the same time that cell phones go from being yuppie toys to senior citizen lifelines.) Remote controls for TV, cable box and CD player, the buttons on the camcorder, the notebook computer keyboard—at the current rate, all will essentially miniaturize themselves out of the running for senior citizen dollars. I keep speaking as though all this is going to take place in the future, but that's wrong: It's already begun to happen. The world of retailing is having an interesting response.

 

Where are all the energy and innovation and capital expenditure in retail environments going today? To serve the coming tsunami of ancient shoppers, of course, am I right? No, I'm wrong—they're all devoted to stores aimed at youthful dollars, like Abercrombie, American Eagle, Roxy and Torrid. The new interactive fixtures and displays coming out of design labs are dazzling—you're never sure if you're in a store or a theme park, which is the whole point, I guess. It must be a lot of fun to dream up such gizmos and the stores that contain them. And so it's no wonder that's where all the action is.

Unfortunately, these stores are catering to a market that's already on the decline. Based on U.S. census data, the number of Americans over sixty-five will more than double by the year 2035—as I said, it's by far the fastest-growing segment of our population. There's plenty of work ahead in making the world of retail better serve senior citizens. For our own sake, let's hope some of that labor, too, is carried out with imagination and verve.

In fact, the time to begin that work is now. Let's start small—by demanding better elevator music! I want to make my supermarket
sojourns to the sounds of the Doors themselves, not 1001 Syrupy Strings' version of “Light My Fire.” In fact, I can't wait to join a senior citizen social center, where we'll all prop ourselves up on our walkers and careen around the dance floor as the DJ spins the special fiftieth-anniversary edition of the
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack.

The aging eye is beginning to be felt in marketing. Mass merchandisers have built a pretty good franchise with older consumers in a few categories, including small appliances, hardware, automotive items and seasonal products. They've been much less successful in books, apparel, health-and-beauty aids and over-the-counter drugs. It's not because older people don't care about the written word or about wanting to look good. It's certainly not because they don't need pain relief or the occasional cough drop for an itchy throat. It might have something to do with the products themselves. The fashion world doesn't seem to have grasped the fact that older people want stylish yet suitable clothing that fits.

At the same time, if you're a guy like me, I'll bet you don't need any more stuff. The fifty-and-over crowd is generally downsizing, adjusting for empty nests and aging parents. Right now I own every shirt, tie, pair of shoes and piece of jewelry I foresee needing for the rest of my life. The only things I require are fruit, vegetables, pasta, wine, olive oil, meat and fish weekly, and annual doses of fresh socks and underwear. Everything else is discretionary (although my longtime live-in—who I call Dreamboat, because she is one—did surprise me two Christmases ago with a new gadget called a Slingbox, which hooks up to my cable TV and home Internet service, so now when I'm stranded in a hotel room in Singapore at two a.m., I can watch Yankees games on my laptop from my TV at home—pure heaven). Like most fifty-somethings, and with the notable exception of that Slingbox, which you're not taking away from me, I'll pick experiences over things any day. Plus a few pairs of socks.

I mentioned the brave new world of wheelchairs earlier, virgin territory that no one, to my knowledge, has staked out yet. These personal vehicles will surely receive a makeover, including souped-up engines, cruise control, lots of upholstery choices (will black leather be too hot
in summer?), big tires like we had on our Jeeps back in the '90s, cell phone chargers, cup holders, CD players and the appropriate bumper stickers (if this wheelchair's a-rockin' don't come a-knockin'). There will be plenty of licensing opportunities, bringing brand names like Harley, BMW and John Deere (or Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Prada) to the marketplace. They won't even be called wheelchairs—and in fact they'll more closely resemble tractor mowers or three-wheeled motorcycles. These babies won't even necessarily connote a handicap. They'll just be cool conveniences, something for the geezer who has everything.

At the other end of the spectrum, it's no secret that next to kids, old people are the biggest market for sneakers. Who else has a lifestyle that doesn't ever require serious grown-up footwear? In fact, athletic gear—soft, rubber-soled shoes, baggy, open-necked shirts, loose pants with elastic waistbands—is tailor-made for the needs of aging fashion plates. Senior citizens have a lot more money to spend on sneakers than kids do and would gladly pay for features designed to bring extra comfort. Still, no self-respecting teenager wants to wear the same athletic shoes as Grandmom, which is probably why all those ads for Nike and Reebok feature youngsters rather than oldsters. Is there no way for a major athleticwear maker to target aged customers? I bet we'll see it before long—it'll just be too lucrative to miss. (Maybe the commercials will star the sixty-five-year-old Michael Jordan playing one-on-one with the twenty-first century's premiere eight-foot center.)

There's a similar question brewing over how
the
baby boomer fashion staple will age: Will kids buy the brand of jeans preferred by their grandparents? I'm assuming that we boomers will wear blue denim right up to the tomb (and why stop there?). But if it's the uniform of the senility set, will anybody else dare touch it? Or will jeans go the way of fedoras?

The world of health and beauty aids now doesn't pay enough attention to the older consumer, but it will have to in the future. There should be entire brands devoted to the needs of people over sixty-five, including special formulations of products for hair, skin, teeth, male grooming and cosmetics. Somebody is also going to have to figure out how to sell incontinence products to aging boomers. The current
category—a few low-key brands of adult diapers sold sheepishly in the feminine hygiene aisle—isn't going to cut it. Will it be Hanes, Calvin Klein, or Estée Lauder? Or will they be sold next to the extra-hold sports bras and athletic supporters?

The mattress store of the future will do well to specialize in selling to seniors. They'll shop long and hard for bedding that's ergonomically sound, and they'll pay for it, too. From Tempur-Pedic to Sleep Number, mattresses will become more quasimedical products than home furnishings. The sleep category is booming. Even hotels are using their beds as a marketing engine for the aging, aching traveler.

When there aren't so many kids afoot in America, the fast-food trade will have to redouble its efforts to keep senior citizen diners interested. They already make up a large part of the fast-food audience, without even being acknowledged beneath the golden arches. Someday it won't be the latest Disney animation flick that gets the Burger King tie-in; it'll be
Rambo: The Nursing Home Insurgency.
And instead of a Beanie Baby, the Happy Meal will come with a Hummel figurine.

When parents shop for clothing, toys, books and videos for their children, they usually know what size to get, or which favored plaything, or at what level the little one is reading. Thirty years from now, though, today's parents will be buying for their grandchildren, and they'll need a little guidance. Will clothing makers have wised up by then and created a sensible, standardized system of sizes? It's chaos out there now, as anyone who shops for kiddie clothes knows. If such a system isn't in place, stores will have to do whatever's necessary—big, easy-to-read size charts, mannequins of different heights, lots of attentive salesclerks, all of the above—to ensure that grandparents can buy clothing with confidence.

If they can't buy clothing, they'll opt for toys or books or DVDs instead. But again, manufacturers and retailers have to make it easier than it is now. The appropriate reader's age should be marked prominently on all kiddie and adolescent books. Same for videos and video games, too. Grandmom doesn't want to accidentally buy Grand Theft Auto for her dear little five-year-old grandson, and she needs a hand to make sure she doesn't.