Gerontographics

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.

GEORGE P. MOSCHIS is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Mature Consumer Studies, Georgia State University, and a member of the Gerontology Program faculty. An internationally recognized authority on marketing to older adults, he has been a consultant to corporations and government agencies throughout the United States and abroad. He contributes frequently to various consumer and trade publications and is author of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and papers. His two most recent books, Marketing to Older Consumers (1992) and Marketing Strategies for the Mature Market (1994), were both published by Quorum, and selected by Choice as being among the outstanding academic books of their years.