Nerd Alert: Don't Age Out Your Audience

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Marketing Architects

Episode Title: Nerd Alert: Don't Age Out Your Audience
Release Date: July 24, 2025
Hosts: Lena Jasper & Rob Demars
Description: In this episode of "The Marketing Architects," hosts Lena Jasper and Rob Demars delve into the dynamics of brand loyalty among older consumers. Challenging the prevailing stereotypes, they explore whether older audiences are truly more loyal to longstanding brands or if their purchasing behaviors mirror those of younger demographics.

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1. Introduction to the Episode

[00:00 - 00:39]

The episode kicks off with a light-hearted exchange between hosts Lena Jasper and Rob Demars, setting the tone for an engaging discussion centered around academic marketing research. Lena introduces the "Nerd Alert" segment, highlighting their commitment to translating complex research into actionable marketing insights.

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2. Exploring Brand Loyalty Among Older Consumers

[00:39 - 04:27]

Lena presents a pivotal study titled "Examining Older Consumers' Loyalty towards Older Brands and Grocery Retailing" by Pei Lingpa, Rachel Kennedy, Zhang Trinh, Bill Page, and Byron Sharp from the University of South Australia (Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2020).

Lena Jasper:
"This study digs into the belief that might feel intuitively true but might not hold up under scrutiny. Do older consumers mostly stick with the old brands they've always known?" [02:07]

Rob shares his personal perspective, questioning the definition of "older" and contemplating whether his own loyalty to brands might be more pronounced compared to younger consumers. Despite being 51, Lena clarifies that the study categorizes "older" as 55 and above.

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3. Key Findings of the Study

[02:12 - 06:51]

Lena summarizes the study's methodology and surprising findings:

• Data Scope: Analyzed over 88,000 grocery trips across 60 brands in six diverse categories (e.g., deodorant, dog food, shampoo, sauces).
• Methodology: Utilized actual panel data from single-person households to accurately track purchase frequency and brand loyalty, avoiding the pitfalls of self-reported data.
• Findings:
  • Brand Loyalty: Older shoppers (55+) do not exhibit a stronger preference for older brands compared to younger consumers. Instead, loyalty correlates more with brand size.
  • Customer Profiles: There is no significant difference in the customer base profiles of older versus newer brands across age groups.
  • Brand Repertoire: All age groups tend to shop from a variety of brands, indicating that familiarity and longevity of a brand alone do not dictate consumer loyalty.

Lena Jasper:
"Despite common stereotypes, the data shows that older people try new brands. Older brands don't have a lock on older buyers." [05:15]

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4. Broader Implications Across Product Categories

[06:51 - 08:49]

Rob questions whether these findings are exclusive to grocery shopping. Lena affirms that additional research across various categories supports the study's conclusions:

• Financial Services (2006, Uncles & Lee): Older consumers showed no significant preference for older financial brands, maintaining a mix of newer and established providers.
• Automobiles (2005 & 2010, Lambert et al., Anderson & Sharp): Initial studies suggested older adults preferred established car brands, but later research indicated that while they might favor these brands slightly, they still explore newer options.
• Diverse Product Categories (2012): A comprehensive study spanning 25 years across 50 product and service categories found minimal age-related differences in brand user profiles, reinforcing that older consumers are not confined to legacy brands.

Lena Jasper:
"Across all these different categories, the pattern mostly holds. Older consumers do not show a consistent preference for older brands." [07:48]

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5. Addressing Potential Nuances and Questions

[07:19 - 08:49]

Rob introduces a nuanced question regarding brand loyalty when older consumers enter new product categories:

Rob Demars:
"If I'm an older consumer and I'm brand new to a category, am I more loyal to the brand that has been around longer?" [06:51]

Lena acknowledges the importance of mental availability and brand visibility, suggesting that while familiarity plays a role in initial adoption, the overall pattern indicates that older consumers remain open to exploring brands beyond their established favorites.

Lena Jasper:
"It's like your brand preferences are like your closet. Sure, there are a few classic pieces you've had for years. That doesn't mean you never add new stuff." [07:46]

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6. Marketing Implications and Strategies

[08:06 - 08:49]

Lena draws actionable insights for marketers:

• Avoid Age-Based Stereotypes: Older consumers are not inherently set in their brand preferences and are open to trying new brands.
• Broaden Marketing Efforts: Brands should not exclude older demographics under the assumption they won't engage. Instead, ensure visibility and relevance to capture this audience.
• Stay Competitive: Legacy brands must continuously innovate and stay competitive to maintain their customer base, just as newer brands strive to gain traction.

Lena Jasper:
"Older brands can't rely on familiarity alone. They have to stay relevant, visible, and competitive, just like newer ones." [05:50]

Rob Demars:
"I am surprised. I would have thought that older folks have become pretty brand loyal by the time they get over the 50-year-old line." [04:55]

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7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[08:49 - End]

The episode concludes with Lena emphasizing the importance of not overlooking older consumers in marketing strategies. By understanding that this demographic is as dynamic and brand-open as younger counterparts, marketers can effectively reach and engage a broader audience.

Lena Jasper:
"They're open to trying your brand. You just have to get in front of them." [08:48]

Rob echoes the sentiment, acknowledging the study's value in reshaping marketing approaches towards older demographics.

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Notable Quotes

• Rob Demars:
  "I've graphed my nerd enthusiasm and the curve is exponential." [00:34]

• Lena Jasper:
  "Older brands can't rely on familiarity alone. They have to stay relevant, visible, and competitive, just like newer ones." [05:50]

• Rob Demars:
  "I would have thought that older folks have become pretty brand loyal by the time they get over the 50-year-old line." [04:55]

• Lena Jasper:
  "It's like your brand preferences are like your closet. Sure, there are a few classic pieces you've had for years. That doesn't mean you never add new stuff." [07:46]

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Key Takeaways

1. Challenging Stereotypes: Older consumers (55+) are not inherently more loyal to older brands; their purchasing behaviors are similar to younger consumers.
2. Brand Repertoire: All age groups prefer a mix of brands, dispelling the notion that older consumers stick solely to legacy brands.
3. Marketing Strategies: Brands should focus on maintaining relevance and visibility across all age demographics, leveraging the openness of older consumers to new options.
4. Broader Applicability: The study's findings extend beyond grocery shopping, applying to various product and service categories, including financial services, automobiles, and personal care.

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Transcript

[Rob Demars]

Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?

[Lena Jasper]

Yes, exactly. What a bunch of nerds.

[Rob Demars]

Nerd alert.

[Lena Jasper]

That's right. Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Lena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects. And I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[Rob Demars]

Hey, Elena.

[Lena Jasper]

Hello. We're back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week, I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, understandable language for Rob and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?

[Rob Demars]

I've graphed my nerd enthusiasm and the curve is exponential.

[Lena Jasper]

Alaina, happy to hear it. Let's get into it. As always, we'll link the research we cover in the episode notes. This week I read a study titled Examining Older Consumers Loyalty towards Older Brands and Grocery retailing. This is from Pei Lingpa, Rachel Kennedy, Zhang Trinh, Bill Page, and Byron Sharp, all for the University of South Australia, published in the Journal of Retailing and consumer services in 2020. So we got to be careful how we cover this study. It must be, it must be accurate considering these. These researchers. But before I get into it, Rob, I wanted to ask you this. What's your gut instinct? Do you think older consumers are more loyal to older brands than younger shoppers?

[Rob Demars]

I have to ask the question, what is older? Because I'm old. What do they mean by older? So I'm going to go with my own focus group of one here. Since I am older, I've grown up my whole life inund options. And for sure, I feel like I am more loyal to those brands than probably younger people are. Younger folks seem more finicky and value conscious, or at least I'm just thinking of my own kids in their 20s. So, yeah, I feel like older people just who didn't grow up with the finicky nature of social media, where everything kind of flip in a day that were more loyal. I'm going with older because I'm older. I feel like I'm probably more loyal to brands than like, my kids are.

[Lena Jasper]

In the study, they defined older consumers as those aged 55 and over. Does that change anything for you?

[Rob Demars]

I'm. I'm 51, so, yeah, no, I. Sticking with it. Sticking with it, Elena.

[Lena Jasper]

Well, you're wrong.

[Rob Demars]

Damn it.

[Lena Jasper]

So this study. Well, we'll talk about it. This study, it digs into this belief that might feel intuitively true, but might not. Hold up under scrutiny. Do older consumers mostly stick with the old brands they've always known? Do they really just keep buying Tide dove hides out of habit or nostalgia? This study puts that idea to the test. They used real purchase data from over 88,000 grocery trips across 60 brands in six categories. This had a wide range of categories, from deodorant and dog food to shampoo and sauces. And instead of asking people what they remembered buying, which can get fuzzy, they used actual panel data from single person households. That way they could track purchase frequency, brand loyalty and shopper age with precision. And then they compared how often each age group bought different brands. Whether older people were more loyal to older brands, and whether older brands had older user bases. And they even adjusted for how long each brand had been in market relative to the shopper's age. So a brand could be older for a 25 year old, but still newer to someone over 70. And they found that older shoppers don't actually prefer older brands, which is kind of surprising. I probably would have thought the same thing, Rob. Older consumers, they don't buy older brands more often than younger consumers. In fact, they behaved like everybody else. They bought a mix of brands, bigger brands got bought more often, and loyalty had more to do with brand size than age. There's a little double jeopardy law in action there. They also found that older brands didn't have noticeably older customer bases. The customer profiles across brands old or new looked remarkably similar regardless of consumer age. So despite common stereotypes, the data shows that older people try new brands. Older brands don't have a lock on older buyers. And everyone shops from a repertoire of brands, not just one. Even though older consumers, they've had decades of exposure to old brands and probably grew up with some of them, they'll still switch it up. The study suggests that older brands can't rely on familiarity alone. They have to stay relevant, visible and competitive, just like newer ones. So the idea that older shoppers are set in their ways isn't just outdated. It's probably costing marketers valuable reach if they assume that new brands won't land with that audience. So, Rob, this study looked at older consumers grocery trips, I guess just consumers grocery trips in general. Do you think these findings apply to every category?

[Rob Demars]

I don't think that the grocery store has any kind of exclusivity to consumer choice. I guess that'd be my gut. I feel like this would apply to cars, it would apply to clothing. But I am surprised. I think that's a really interesting study because I really would have thought that older folks have become pretty brand loyal by the time they get over the 50 year old line and would be loyal to the brands that have served them in the past. So that very interesting study.

[Lena Jasper]

I was interested in this question because I could see that objection coming up like, oh well, this just has to do with grocery brands. But the findings do apply to other categories. And I did some of my own research to find some other studies that back this up across a wide range of product categories from everyday items to big ticket services and financial products. And to just give a few examples, in 2006, uncles and Lee did a study on financial services and credit cards. So they looked at credit card usage and brand loyalty with different age groups. They used a modeling approach called the Dirichlet model which we've heard of before. It's great for capturing real world buyer behavior. And they found no significant age based preferences for older financial brands. Again, older consumers were just as likely to have a mix of cards from newer and older providers. Research has also looked into cars and durable goods. Lambert, Pandrad and Laurent in 2005 found that older adults bought more established car brands. But that was based on self reported data and single categories. More recent work has actually challenged that. So in 2010, Anderson and Sharp had a broader study and they argued that idea is overstated. So even in cars, older consumers still buy newer brands of durable goods. They just do it less frequently like everyone else in low frequency categories. And then there was a massive study in 2012 that looked at 25 years of data across 50 product and service categories from shampoo to insurance. And they found this consistent pattern. User profiles for computing brands hardly differ by age. So the average age of a brand's customer base isn't meaningfully different even for newer versus older brands. Which means older people are not stuck on legacy brands, even in categories like electronics, personal care or retail services. So across all these different categories, the pattern mostly holds. Older consumers do not show a consistent preference for older brands. That means that newer brands shouldn't write them off, which we see a lot. Older brands also can't assume they're going to stick around without staying competitive, which I think probably lends itself towards this idea of reaching broad audiences and how important that is.

[Rob Demars]

I'm sure this isn't a nuance that is trying to be expressed in the study, but one question that comes to mind is if I'm an older consumer and I'm brand new to a category, am I more loyal to the brand? That has demonstrated they've been around the block versus a newer brand in the category. If I'm new to the category as an older person, does that make sense what I'm saying?

[Lena Jasper]

It does, I would think. And this is. I'm not sure if this is part of the study. I don't remember. But I would think that familiarity would matter because familiarity matters to making purchases. So if there's like you have some mental availability of the brand, you're probably right.

[Rob Demars]

It's a good point. Like at least you're going in with some perceived. Even though you haven't participated in the category before, you you've known of the brand through happenstance.

[Lena Jasper]

Yeah, yeah. I would think it's about what's visible to you. Where's your mental availability? But I think this study is saying that they're not necessarily entering a new category. They're not. They don't necessarily have this just built in preference. Because a brand's been all around for a long time, it matters much more like what has been recently in their heads.

[Rob Demars]

Cool.

[Lena Jasper]

Okay, Rob, GPT Imagine your brand preferences are like your closet. Sure, there are a few classic pieces you've had for years. That doesn't mean you never add new stuff. You buy what fits, what's available and what catches your eye. It's not frozen in time like a museum exhibit or a sealed time capsule. And that's how older consumers behave. They don't just stick to what they know. They update their brand choices just like anyone else based on what's relevant, useful and visible today. So I like this study because I think all the time you hear marketers where they have a very specific demographic they, that they're selling their product or service to. And yes, I understand sometimes your specific product is for an age demo. It doesn't make sense to go beyond it. However, you could argue about influencers like who else could inspire the product?

[Rob Demars]

Absolutely secondary audiences.

[Lena Jasper]

Yeah. But I think we talk a lot about how older consumers can be sort of left out of advertising. This just shows they're not stuck in their ways. You know, they're open to trying your brand. You just have to get in front of them. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing marketing architects.