This document discusses the importance of companies becoming more age-friendly to adapt to an aging customer base. It outlines five actions companies can take: 1) Review the total customer journey and all touchpoints to ensure they accommodate physical changes of aging. 2) Adopt universal design principles to make products usable by all ages. 3) Incorporate age-friendliness into original designs, as it is less costly than retrofitting. 4) Avoid siloing age-friendliness initiatives and ensure strong leadership. 5) View population aging as a sustainability-level issue that will significantly impact business models over time. The author argues that becoming age-friendly requires changes across a company and should be a strategic, not just ethical, priority.

1. RESOURCES
The Importance of Being Age-Friendly
By: Dick Stroud
Publish Date: August 20, 2012
A quarter of a century ago Charles Scheme published a journal paper
titled Marketing to our Aging Population: Responding to Physiological
Changes. The paper outlined the implications for marketers as the
senses, minds and bodies of consumer’s age.
Since then very little else has been researched and written about the
subject. This is surprising because the median age of consumers in the
USA and Europe has steadily increased.
Much has been written about the psychological effects of aging and
the mechanics of segmenting and communicating with older
consumers. Even more has been written about the apparent
differences in attitudes and behaviours between the generations.
There is one factor that is common across all of the geographies, and
all of the social and economic classes, and is shared by men and
women. With a few small exceptions, the changes to consumers that
result from their physical aging are universal, as are their implications for
companies and governments.
Yet the most basic of questions has been largely ignored: ‘How do
companies adapt to the relentless aging of their most important asset –
their customers?’ Surprisingly, the recession and its effect on consumer
spending, is forcing companies to take interest in this question.

2. Companies in Europe and the USA are desperately looking for growth
opportunities. Slowly, often begrudgingly, they are realizing that any
growth in consumer spending is more likely to come from older than
younger customers.
Unfortunately, most companies don’t realize that adopting a business
strategy to target older people involves many more things than
creating a new advertising campaign.
In its report on Global Aging[1], the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
says: ‘companies should review their channel strategies to ensure that
they are compatible with the needs of the silver segment’.
The task is even more extensive than BCG suggests. To satisfy the
requirements of the older market requires companies to optimize all of
the customer’s experiences and to ensure they match their customer’s
physical abilities.
The author defines age-friendliness as an environment in which the
unique physical needs of older people are satisfied in a way that is
natural and beneficial for all ages. One wonders why all companies
don’t aspire to this goal?
The importance of age-friendliness is not limited to how companies
engage with their customers. We need age-friendly cities for citizens,
we need age-friendly medical services for patients and age-friendly
workplaces for employees.
So, how should companies respond to ensure their marketing and
operations align with the aging population? These five actions are a
good starting point.
1. Review the total customer journey
The following table shows how one of the experiences in the customer
journey, the product, can be further refined into five sub-experiences.
One of these sub-experiences, packaging, can then be divided into a
further five touchpoints.

3. Experience Sub-experience Touchpoint
Categories of the customer Intersection between the The specific point
journey business and the consumer being measured
• Communications
• Online
• Retail
• Product
• Support
• Assembly
• Design
• Packaging
• Pricing
• Warrant
1. Graphics
2. Handling
and carrying
3. Information
4. Opening
and closing
5. Text
Most customer journeys will have over a hundred touchpoints and
each of these might be affected by one or more of the 12 affects of
physiological aging shown in the following table.

4. By reviewing each of the touchpoints and ensuring they are capable
of responding to the aging minds, senses and bodies of customers,
companies can radically improve the quality of the customer
experience – not just for the older people but for all ages.
Becoming age-friendly is not about making a few big changes it
involves making small changes to multiple touchpoints. The devil is in
the detail.
2. Adopt Universal Design principles
The mantra of Universal Design is that products and environments
should be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without
the need for adaptation or specialized design.
If a company genuinely adopts the culture of Universal Design and
applies its principles to all the interactions with customers then it will be
a long way towards becoming age-friendly.
These Universal Design principles are basic common sense. Many
companies "talk the talk" but few have embedded these principles into
their corporate culture:
• Equitable use - making the design appealing and useable by all
ages.
• Flexibility in use - accommodating a wide range of individual
preferences and abilities.
• Simple and intuitive use - ensuring the user’s experience and prior
knowledge is not a barrier.
• Perceptible information – communicating effectively irrespective
of the ambient conditions and the user’s sensory abilities.
• Tolerance for error – minimizing the consequences of accidental or
unintended actions.
• Low physical effort – minimizing the physical demands of using the
design.

5. • Size and space – ensuring the user’s body size and mobility is not a
limitation.
3. Sooner you start the better (less costly)
I recently stayed in a hotel that had just completed a major
refurbishment. It is unlikely that it will now change the design of the
rooms and common areas for at least a decade. No thought had
been given to ensuring the new design was age-friendly.
The majority of the customers are aged 60-plus and their importance to
the hotel will undoubtedly increase. Had the new designs been made
age-friendly the additional cost to the hotel group would have been
insignificant.
The moral of this story is that it costs very little to incorporate age-
friendliness into the original designs but much more if it has to be done
retrospectively.
4. Beware of ‘silos’ and CSR
There are two common mistakes that companies make when
implementing an age-friendly strategy. The first results from a lack of
clarity for why the strategy is being adopted. The author has
encountered many instances when age-friendliness is put into the
same group of issues as disability and accessibility and is conceived as
something a company is ethically compelled to do.
Indeed, there may be an ethical dimension but its adoption is primarily
for reasons that affect the P&L and Balance sheet.
The second mistake is to underestimate the effort that it takes to
implement a culture change that involves so many of the corporate
silos.
Age-friendliness is not just a ‘marketing issue’ but involves most of the
operational functions within a company. As with any issue where the
responsibility for implementation is diffused, it requires especially strong
executive leadership to ensure it succeeds.5. Think sustainability – think
age-friendliness.
For many years the subject of ‘sustainability’ was of interest to a
dedicated group of activists on the fringe of the business world. In a
matter of five years it became the subject that dominates much of
government and corporate decision-making.

6. A similar change is taking place with the subject of ‘population aging’,
which has moved from an academic debate between demographers
and gerontologists to become a mega-issue that affects companies,
large and small.
The greatest mistake that companies make is to underestimate the
scale of the changes that population will make their business and the
speed that this issue will move up the list of corporate priorities.
Company’s products, processes, channels and culture have to serve
their customers. The one thing we know for certain is that this precious
commodity is getting older.
[1] BCG Global Aging. How companies can adapt to the new reality – Dec 2011