Everyone has heard that societies are aging. The phrase is everywhere, in reports, in speeches, in the news. It is one of those facts that sounds fully understood the moment you hear it.

But a phrase is not a picture. You can hold “aging society” in your head for years without it ever turning into anything concrete, the way you can know your pension exists without once picturing the life it is meant to pay for. The words are familiar, but what they describe is not.

A concept that stays abstract cannot change a decision. This is why the largest shift in the market moves fewer strategies than a passing food trend. Not because people have not heard of it. Because they have only heard of it, it has never become real enough to act on.

“Aging society” sounds like a fact about the future. It is a fact about the present. In Europe, shoppers over 50 already account for 55 percent of grocery value, and the projections only move that number up. Not a group to reach eventually. The majority, already at the counter, sitting inside a phrase so familiar that nobody stops to ask what it actually says.

The phrase does the hiding

Most trends arrive already legible. You see a food fad, a wellness claim, a sustainability move, and you can picture the version you would make, this week, inside your own rules. The trend comes with instructions.

Aging comes with none. A younger person looks at the same curve and sees a fact, not a move, because the changes it points to are ones they have never felt. You cannot picture that a jar gets heavier, that small print recedes, that you buy less because you eat less, until it happens to you. And because you cannot picture it, you assume there is nothing to adjust. Everyone shops roughly as you do. The market you know is the market there is.

From there it is a short step to a story that makes the neglect feel reasonable. Older shoppers are loyal, the thinking goes, settled in their habits, already ours. So the effort goes where the excitement is, toward younger blood, new households, the buyers still forming their preferences. It is a tidy justification. It is also wrong. Older shoppers are not loyal by default; they switch and compare like everyone else. But the belief is comfortable, and comfort is enough to keep a plan pointed the wrong way.

Why we would rather it stayed a phrase

There is a second reason the abstraction is comfortable, and it is worth saying plainly.

Most trends flatter the people who follow them. Wellness, doing good, newness. Working on them feels like being early, like betting on where the world is heading, like youth and momentum. Aging offers none of that. It is a market, a large one, but it does not come wrapped in new, young, and next. It comes carrying the opposite: slowing down, needing help, the body doing less than it did, and past all that, the fact that a life ends.

No one wants to sit with that on a Tuesday afternoon. So the abstraction becomes a kind of shelter. As long as aging is a curve about the population, it is not about you, or your body, or the years you have left. The vagueness is not just a gap in understanding. It is a small mercy, and we are reluctant to give it up.

Think of the pension again. Most people avoid understanding their own, not because it does not matter. It plainly does, but for two reasons at once: it is hard to follow, and it insists that one day you will be old. Difficulty and discomfort, working together. So it waits. Aging, as a commercial reality, is the pension of marketing strategy. The same avoidance, for the same two reasons, sits on top of the largest market most of us will ever serve.

What happens when no one looks

Normally, a market warns you before it hurts you. Sales dip, a competitor takes share, a number turns red, and the organization wakes up and moves. Aging sends no such warning. The value comes in on schedule, booked as ordinary revenue, with no complaints or crises attached. Nothing collapses. The ceiling on growth just sits lower than it should, a little lower each year, in a way no report will ever trace back to a phrase nobody unpacked.

The numbers have been public for years. The average shopper is already older than the strategy aimed at them. The plan pictures someone younger than the person standing at the shelf, and keeps picturing them, because the correction only comes when someone chooses to make the abstract concrete, and that choice asks something uncomfortable of whoever makes it.

So here is the question worth sitting with. Getting to know older shoppers can feel uncomfortable, even unappealing. It is not new, not cool, not the thing your peers will admire you for working on. But they are fast becoming the default shopper, the majority at the counter, and the job was never to design for the people who look like you. It was to design for the people who buy.
So what are you waiting for?

The old pack had started to look tired next to the challenger brands. The new version was cleaner on shelf. It used less plastic. The color blocking was stronger. The sustainability story was easier to tell. The pack shots looked good in the sell-in deck.

Then the product had to be used by a 72-year-old standing at a kitchen counter.

The new tab was smaller because it looked neater. The label carried more information because every internal stakeholder had won one small battle. The contrast was weaker because premium design still has a strange attachment to pale grey type. The cap sealed better because leakage is easy to count. Nobody tested whether someone with arthritis could open it.

Grip strength is harder to see in a dashboard.

Packaging decisions fail older consumers not at the level of brand strategy, but at the level of fingers, eyesight, joints, wet hands, kitchen lighting, and patience. The commercial cost is measurable. Brands are not measuring it in the right place.

The consumer does not complain. They cut the pack open. They ask someone else. They spill part of the product. They stop buying the format. In the data, that looks like a weak repeat, low loyalty, or price sensitivity.

The problem is simpler. The pack did not fit the consumer.

A DS Smith survey found that 85% of shoppers aged 55 and over needed tools or scissors to open a package, compared with 75% overall. The same survey found that 19% of consumers say difficult packaging has turned them off buying from the same brand again. Those two numbers tell a story that most category reviews never connect: the consumers most likely to struggle with packaging are also the consumers most likely to leave because of it.

A standard already exists. Almost nobody uses it.

Medicine companies were forced to face this more directly than anyone in the consumer goods industry. If a patient cannot open a blister pack, reclose a cap, read the instructions, or dispense the right dose, the product has not reached the user. And some of those products also need to be hard for children to access.

Under US poison-prevention rules, child-resistant packaging must also pass a senior-adult-use test. The test panel only goes up to age 70, which is itself a limitation given that the over-80 population is the fastest-growing demographic. But the principle is right: child safety and adult usability are not separate problems.

CPG faces the same tension. Detergent pods, cleaning concentrates, dishwasher tablets: all need to be difficult for children to open and easy for older adults to use. Most packaging briefs treat those as separate requirements. Medicine treats them as one test.

In 2015, the ISO published one specifically for consumer packaging. ISO 17480 includes a consumer panel method for assessing ease of opening with older adults aged 65 to 80. Panelists are given the pack and only the instructions that would appear on the actual packaging. No demonstration. If the product is meant to be opened without tools, but the panelist asks for one, that counts as a failure.

Senior-friendly is not a mood in a design brief. It is a tested, timed, and observed performance.

When researchers applied this method to 10 single-portion food and beverage packs, seven failed. Five because at least one participant could not open the pack within one minute, and two because satisfaction scores were too low. The standard exists. The protocol is published. Most CPG brands have never run it.

Some brands have already run the test

Kellogg’s changed its portion-controlled cereal from a box format to an easier-open sachet with lower opening force and clearer instructions. The company worked with Arthritis Australia’s Accessible Design Division and Georgia Tech’s Brad Fain. The range became part of Arthritis Australia’s Easy To Open Certified program. The old format made use harder than it needed to be. A better format fixed it.

P&G added tactile markers to Herbal Essences bottles: raised lines for shampoo, raised dots for conditioner, because in the shower, many people do not wear glasses. Ariel SECURECLIC went further, combining child-safe certification with an ergonomic opening system and large, clear instructions at the top of the pack.

None of these is a specialist accessibility project. Each is mainstream packaging that works for a wider range of consumers. The opportunity is not a separate "senior range." It is the ordinary product, working properly.

Pull five products in your range that shoppers over 60 regularly buy. Run a simple test in normal home conditions: kitchen lighting, wet hands, dry hands, no scissors, no help. Ask people aged 70-plus to find the opening point, read the instructions, open the pack, dispense or remove the product, close it again, and put it away.

If someone needs a knife, the pack failed. If someone asks for help, the pack failed. If someone opens it and says they would not buy it again, the pack failed in the only place that matters.

Your packaging brief probably specifies shelf standout, sustainability credentials, and tamper evidence. Check whether it specifies opening force, label contrast, and legibility under low light. If it does not, it is an incomplete brief, and someone downstream is already reaching for a knife.

Leave a comment

Share The Aging Consumer

Marketers love labels. Few are stickier, or more seductive, than the generational kind: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z. They show up in pitch decks, brand strategy documents, and consumer research.

There is a reason for that. Generational labels are not meaningless. They can be powerful cultural shorthand. They capture shared experiences, create a common language, and sometimes spotlight real differences worth noting.

But labels are blunt instruments. They give a useful sketch, and they often oversimplify. If you want to understand how people behave, especially in categories like food, retail, or consumer goods, generations give you a broad story. Age gives you the strategy.

Where generations came from

Generations did not begin as marketing shorthand. Sociologists like Auguste Comte and Karl Mannheim used the concept to explain how age groups experience, and sometimes drive, social change.

Writing in 1923, Mannheim argued that people who come of age during the same historical moment often form a shared identity. Importantly, he distinguished between biology (parents and children) and timing (when people hit key life stages against the backdrop of major events).

Originally, generations were a tool for understanding how history shapes outlook. Over time, marketers repurposed the tool. In fast-changing societies, labeling cohorts looked like a simple way to segment consumers. Too simple.

Academics have pushed back for decades. Philip N. Cohen (University of Maryland) called generation labels constructs “imposed by survey researchers, journalists, or marketing firms” that encourage stereotyping. In 2023, Pew Research stopped using them altogether, arguing the harm outweighed the insight. And Louis Menand, writing in The New Yorker, put it bluntly: there is no evidence people within a generation are more similar to each other than to people in different ones.

Why 20 years cannot mean one Thing

Generational labels usually cover 15–20 years. That is an eternity in terms of life stage and worldview.

Take Millennials. Born between 1981 and 1996, the oldest are in their mid-40s, the youngest still in their 20s. One group has mortgages and teenagers; the other is just getting established in work and housing. On paper, they belong to the same cohort. In reality, they are living very different lives.

A 44-year-old Millennial is likely closer in outlook to a 45-year-old Gen Xer than to a 28-year-old Millennial. Yet marketers treat them as one uniform block because a chart says so.

Why generational shorthand sticks

Generational shorthand sticks because it is easy. But easy does not make it accurate.

“Millennial” is still used to conjure a meme-loving, student-debt-laden 20-something. In truth, that “Millennial” is now pushing 40. Likewise, “Boomer” has become a catch-all for “anyone older than me,” flattening meaningful differences across decades of life.

With labels come stereotypes: entitled Millennials, cynical Gen Xers, tech-obsessed Gen Z. These clichés reduce people to caricatures and distract from real drivers of behavior. Once people internalize the stereotype, it can also shape how they see themselves. Generational shorthand can highlight fundamental shifts, but it also risks oversimplifying, turning differences into stereotypes.

The obsession with the youngest shoppers

Another recurring issue is the obsession with the newest generation to enter the market. As the Google Trends chart shows, interest in “Millennials” surged, only to be eclipsed by an even steeper spike in attention to “Gen Z.”

Marketers chase novelty, assuming the youngest group holds the key to future behaviors. This cycle distorts priorities.

Take alcohol consumption. A few years ago, headlines marveled: Why is Gen Z not drinking? Now, new studies claim that Gen Z is drinking after all. The truth may be simpler than the supposed generational riddle. Gen Z spans ages 13 to 28. The legal drinking age explains most of the gap, long before you need a cohort story.

Meanwhile, Gen Z makes up around 20% of the population but only about 4% of consumer value, as their earning power is still developing. Older generations, who hold far more disposable income, are too often overlooked, misclassified, or reduced to caricature.

The fixation on youth obscures the more stable and profitable insights tied to age itself.

The real problem: wrong assumptions

As Menand noted, generational categories are media constructions. They sound authoritative, but their limitations show quickly. The central idea that people in the same generation act alike, and differently from those in other generations, does not hold up. As a quick check, take one generational slide from your last deck and remake it with age bands and life stages. If the story shifts, you were looking at age or context, not an actual generational effect.

Behavior varies more reliably in relation to age, income, and context. A recent LinkedIn post compared how brand trust is shaped differently across generations, using a line graph to connect different “drivers” of brand trust.

That is a red flag. Those drivers are not points along a single spectrum. They are separate dimensions. Putting them on one line invites people to read meaning into the shape of the curve that is not really there.

The bigger problem was the interpretation. The analysis assumed that trust is shaped by generational identity. The more relevant question is whether other dynamics are at play. For example, younger consumers may emphasize innovation because they enjoy new experiences and have not yet formed long-term brand relationships. Older consumers may prioritize brand history and reputation because they have lived experience with what happens when brands change or disappear.

More subtly, the analysis ignored when people became shoppers. If you started shopping in the 1980s, you met a very different retail environment from someone starting in 2015. These cohort-specific experiences matter, and they are not captured by a generational label alone.

This points to a core methodological issue. Are we seeing the effects of age, or people being at different stages of life? Are we looking at period effects, where something happens to everyone at the same time, such as a pandemic or economic downturn? Or are the differences shaped by cohort, people who came of age in a similar cultural and economic context?

A simple diagnostic for any “generational” chart looks like this:

• Are your variables actually on a spectrum, or are they separate attributes that should not be joined in a single line?

• Are you sure you are looking at a generational effect, and not age or life stage differences?

• What year did these shoppers first enter the category, and how might that cohort history be showing up in your data?

If your chart fails those checks, you do not have a clean generational insight. You have age, life stage, or cohort patterns wearing a generational label.

Demographer Norman Ryder noted decades ago that without tracking people over time, it is impossible to tell if you are looking at a generational trait, a short-term fad, or just something common to being 25. His work laid the foundation for age, period, and cohort analytics.

Why age beats generations

In my own research, I focused on age rather than generation. I wanted to understand how people change as they get older, and age proved a far better predictor than generation. A 26-year-old and a 44-year-old may both be Millennials, but their priorities, habits, and decisions reflect their age, not their label.

That is the challenge with generational categories: they stay fixed while the people inside them change. A 35-year-old Millennial today will be 45 in ten years. If you rely only on the label, you keep recalculating what it means. Age cuts through that. Age will not explain everything, but it usually explains more than a 20-year label.

It also forces sharper questions. What does a 32-year-old new parent need from a brand? What does a 68-year-old retiree want from a digital interface? These are the questions that actually drive strategy. In practice, I keep generations for cultural insight work and default to age, life stage, and cohort when I am building or critiquing a strategy.

Generations give us stories. Age gives us strategy.

Generational frameworks still matter. They show how cultural moments shape identity and how people see themselves in relation to others. They are useful for stories. I am not arguing that we should throw out generations. I am arguing for putting them in their place. Use generational language when you want to capture cultural mood or shared references. When you decide what to design, who to prioritize, and where to spend, you need age, life stage, and cohort instead.

If the goal is to understand consumer behavior, who buys what, when, and why, age is the sharper tool. Age moves, and people move with it. Generational labels stay fixed while the people within them change.

Age has limits, too. A 60-year-old marathon runner lives a very different life from a 60-year-old caregiver. Chronological age, set against psychology and context, is still a stronger starting point than a broad cohort label.

Use generations to frame the story. Use age to guide the strategy.

The image stuck with me. Not just because older consumers are indeed treated as a monolith, but because I have noticed a pattern. Increasingly, ads cast older people as just as cool, wild, and thrill-seeking as their younger counterparts. You have seen the archetypes: the skydiving grandparent, the retired woman in a monster truck. The message is that age is irrelevant if your attitude is right.

At first glance, this feels progressive. It looks like inclusion. Scratch beneath the surface and you find the same trap: one stereotype quietly replacing another.

Four stereotypes still shaping how we see older adults

For decades, advertising has relied on reductive roles for older people. Four stand out.

• The technologically inept senior. The trope of the confused grandparent asking “What’s a TikTok?” remains everywhere. Nearly 70% of consumers say advertisers cling to this image, even though most people over 50 use smartphones and social platforms.

• The out-of-touch relic. Seniors portrayed as clueless about culture or fashion reinforce the idea that they are irrelevant to modern life. That exclusion fuels invisibility in mainstream media.

• The physically weak or afflicted. From health supplements to mobility aids, older adults are shown as stooped, slow, or asleep in a chair. Mockery has softened, but decline still dominates.

• The happy older couple. Retirement ads filled with benign gardeners and hand-holders flatten older life into one-dimensional cheer. Not offensive, but bland, and it segregates media “for seniors” from everything else.

Take YoungCapital's "Boost Your Boomer" campaign. Styled like a Gen Z tech ad, it depicts Boomers as broken products to be "rebooted" by younger workers. It pretends to celebrate intergenerational cooperation but actually infantilizes older adults, useful only once "fixed" by youth. The joke is at their expense, not for their benefit.

Or Ensure's muscle-and-bone-strength ad. Less mocking, more caregiving, but still reductive. It frames aging as a deficiency: a decline to be corrected with nutrition. The intent may be supportive, but the lens is narrow.

Both examples reveal the same dynamic. Whether through satire or sympathy, older adults are cast as problems to solve. Obsolete, frail, or in need of rescue.

The rise of the “Super-Ager”

Lately, we have swung to the opposite extreme: the Super-Ager. This version trades frailty for daredevilry. Skydiving, crowd-surfing, monster-truck-driving. Fearless, yes. Realistic? Not quite.

Consider Coca-Cola's Mr. Hadley spot, where a Coke Zero inspires an older man to get a tattoo, join a Pride parade, dive into a pool, and crowd-surf to Queen's "I Want to Break Free." Or Doritos' "For the Bold in Everyone," where a grandmother abandons routine to commandeer a monster truck.

These campaigns aim to be age-positive. They want older people to look bold, rebellious, adventurous. But they create new problems.

• They flatten reality. Not everyone at 84 can, or wants to, crowd-surf. Calling it a matter of “attitude” erases the structural and physical realities of aging.

• They swap one cliche for another. We move from doddering to daredevil. Still a stereotype, just with a better outfit.

• They center youth as the gold standard. Fulfillment is framed as acting young. Yet satisfaction at 70 may look quieter, rooted, and un-Instagrammable.

• They subtly blame the individual. If you are not joyful, wild, or camera-ready in later life, the implication is that you have failed to age “successfully.” The standard is youthfulness, not fit between life and context.

These ads are entertaining. They challenge old tropes. They also tether older people's value to youthful behavior. That is not liberation. It is another form of ageism.

What stereotypes cost: the human case

Stereotypes do not stay in commercials. They shape real-world attitudes, with measurable consequences.

For older adults, repeated exposure to frailty or irrelevance erodes self-image, health, and even longevity. A review across 45 countries shows internalized ageism consistently shortens life expectancy. Even brief exposure to negative cues can impair memory, mobility, and mood. Invisibility in culture reinforces isolation and discourages engagement.

Younger people absorb the message too, developing a fear of aging and a distance from older generations. One study found that belief in media stereotypes heightened the dread of growing old.

Policy is not immune. During COVID-19, ageist assumptions shaped decisions around elder isolation and treatment prioritization. In workplaces, stereotypes normalize discrimination.

The WHO calls ageism a major social determinant of health. The costs are collective: reduced opportunity, worsened health outcomes, and weaker social cohesion. The UK Parliament has warned that narratives like “greedy Boomers vs. struggling Millennials” stoke resentment between generations.

What stereotypes cost: the commercial case

The human costs are reason enough to act. But the commercial costs should concern brand managers too.

When advertising stereotypes older consumers, it does not just offend them. It loses them. Older consumers who do not see themselves in a brand’s communication have no reason to engage with it. In categories where over-50s account for the majority of spending, that disconnect translates directly into missed revenue.

And the effect works in both directions. Brands that patronize older consumers do not just lose older customers. Research consistently shows that all age groups respond more positively to advertising that features authentic, realistic portrayals of people. Condescension toward any group signals something about the brand itself. Younger consumers notice it too.

The brands getting this right are not choosing between commercial performance and responsible representation. They are discovering that the two reinforce each other. Getting representation right builds trust. Trust builds preference. Preference builds revenue. The business case and the ethical case point in the same direction.

What good representation looks like

Some campaigns show what’s possible when ads treat older adults as people, not symbols.

Chevrolet’s 2023 Christmas ad tells the story of a grandfather who asks his granddaughter to take his wife, who is struggling with memory loss, on a drive in their old Suburban. Familiar places spark recognition. Aging is not denied or mocked. It is honored through history, connection, and care.

Nike’s Unlimited Youth featuring Sister Madonna Buder, the 86-year-old Ironman triathlete, strikes a similar note. She is extraordinary, but the tone is reverent, not prescriptive. She is not framed as defying her age. She is defining it for herself.

These ads resist caricature. They show aging as layered: strength and vulnerability, memory and endurance, joy and fatigue. Inclusion here means portraying the full spectrum. The bold, the content, the tech-savvy, the digitally indifferent. Real people.

The role of the industry itself

Advertising’s blind spot on aging is not just cultural. It is structural.

Internally, agencies skew young. Only 6% of employees are over 50, far fewer than in law, finance, or medicine. Experience is not valued in the same way as it is in other fields. As Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy notes, advertising lacks a clear framework for seniority. Years add weight in law or medicine, but not in marketing.

Nearly 80% of ad professionals acknowledge ageism in the industry; over 40% have witnessed it firsthand. About a third have experienced it themselves.

When few older creatives are in the room, stereotypes are the default. Misrepresentation is not surprising when lived reality is absent from the table.

Where do we go from here?

If advertisers want to connect meaningfully with older audiences, they have to do more than swap cliches.

It starts with hiring and listening to older creatives. Designing campaigns that speak to older people without filtering everything through the lens of youth. Rejecting the notion that relevance requires rebellion.

Aging does not need to be hidden, hacked, or heroized.

It just needs to be seen.

The Biggest Shift in Consumer Behavior Is Age. Not Tech. Not Generations. Age.

People are living longer. They are buying, switching, and using products in ways the industry still treats as secondary. Strategy remains fixated on youth, while the most consequential changes are coming from older consumers whose constraints, effort tolerance, and error costs are quietly reshaping demand.

This publication is for marketers, brand leaders, researchers, and policymakers who want to stop treating age as a niche and start treating it as the operating context of modern consumption. Age shapes how people evaluate options, manage effort, assess risk, and what loyalty even means in real-world conditions.

The default consumer is no longer young. Longer lives and extended life stages are changing what people need from brands, categories, and retail systems. Yet much of marketing and design still runs on assumptions built for a shorter life course and a different shopper.

That is the gap The Aging Consumer exists to close. No hype. No miracle fixes. Clear analysis, structural explanations, and the occasional deadpan line when the data makes an industry belief untenable.

I am Linda van Rijn, PhD. My work focuses on a recurring strategic failure: we keep treating age like a segment instead of the condition under which consumption now takes place. That error distorts targeting, innovation, measurement, and design. I write to make that misread harder to sustain.

What you will find here

• Slow shifts that compound into material strategic consequences

• Assumptions that quietly misdirect investment and innovation

• Opportunities missed because aging is framed as “someone else’s problem.”

What you can expect

• Insight into how age reshapes real consumer decisions

• Interpretation grounded in evidence, not narrative convenience

• A voice that is clear, critical, and indifferent to trend cycles

If you work in strategy, retail, or policy and want to understand how aging is redrawing the consumer map, this is for you.

Subscribe for monthly reflections. Quietly sharp. Structurally grounded.

Linda

Subscribe now

That was before the store closed.

Now her nearest option is seven kilometers away. The bus runs twice a day. She doesn’t drive. Her daughter lives an hour away. So she waits for weekends, hoping someone can take her, or she simply makes do with what’s in the pantry.

She misses the lettuce most of all. And the bench.

Across the Netherlands, village supermarkets like Mieke’s are vanishing, especially in regions with aging populations and shrinking public transport. At first glance, it looks like a logistical inconvenience. But zoom out, and it becomes clear: this is a slow-moving public health crisis. Without nearby shops, older adults struggle to access nutritious food, lose daily social contact, and become more likely to need costly medical care.

And while this story is Dutch, the pattern stretches across aging nations from Germany and Austria to Japan and the United States.

The vanishing point

Between 2008 and 2015, rural residents in the Netherlands saw the distance to their nearest supermarket rise faster than anywhere else in the country. Not by accident. Demographic decline, retail consolidation, and the economics of small-town business all pushed shops to close. New policies, like the recent ban on tobacco sales in supermarkets, are expected to accelerate the trend by cutting already-thin margins.

When a store shutters, what disappears is not just food access. It is the quiet services supermarkets provide: a place to bump into neighbors, buy a newspaper, or ask for help. These stores stitched communities together. Without them, village life frays.

A former supermarket stands empty. For many villages, this is becoming the new normal (source: Midjourney).

Older, slower, and further away

In 1990, just under 13% of Dutch residents were over 65. Today it is over 20%. By 2070, it will be 5.4 million people. The oldest populations are not evenly distributed. They are clustered in rural provinces like Drenthe, Limburg, and Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Those are also the regions where supermarkets are disappearing fastest.

The overlap is not a coincidence. It is a warning.

Mobility data makes the point clearer: four in ten people aged 75–85 report physical limitations. Among those over 85, it is seven in ten. Meanwhile, bus routes are being cut back. Younger people, along with their cars, are moving to cities. What is left are older residents, often alone, increasingly immobile, and watching their safety nets disappear.

Fresh food, out of reach

The average Dutch household lives 1.5 kilometers from a supermarket. In rural areas, it is often more than five. On paper, that doesn’t sound far. But for an 82-year-old without a car, it is another world.

Distance matters. Studies show that when fresh food access declines, diets shift toward processed, shelf-stable goods. Already, 15% to 30% of older Dutch adults living at home are malnourished. Malnutrition is not abstract. It means weaker immune systems, higher infection risk, faster muscle loss. That translates into more hospital visits, higher healthcare costs, and loss of independence.

E-commerce rarely solves the gap. Digital literacy, delivery fees, and the reality that logistics firms favor cities make online shopping a poor substitute for a nearby store.

Access to fresh produce isn’t a lifestyle perk. It is baseline healthcare.

Isolation by design

Supermarkets are not just food suppliers. They are a social infrastructure. A place to run into neighbors, ask after someone’s health, or simply hear your name spoken out loud.

When a store disappears, so does that casual human contact. And isolation, we know, is toxic. It raises the risk of depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and premature death. It drives up demand for mental health services and long-term care.

The result? Higher health costs downstream, triggered by the loss of a grocery store upstream.

How a missing store becomes a health expense

In 2019, nearly half of the Netherlands’ €97 billion healthcare budget went to people over 65, a 22% increase since 2015. And the curve is only rising.

The evidence on food access is striking. A U.S. model projected that expanding access to fruits and vegetables could prevent nearly 300,000 cardiovascular events and cut lifetime healthcare costs by $39 billion. Real-world programs echo this: one U.S. study found that people with steady food access spent almost 30% less on healthcare annually than those facing food insecurity.

Keeping rural supermarkets open may be the cheapest healthcare policy no one is talking about.

Local solutions with local hands

Not every village is giving up. Across the Netherlands, residents have reopened shuttered stores as volunteer-run community supermarkets. They are modest operations, serving 1,000–1,500 people. But they keep shelves stocked and neighbors connected.

These stores prove a point: when food access is treated as a shared responsibility rather than just a business proposition, communities adapt.

What other countries are doing

Japan, further along the aging curve, has transformed its convenience stores into community anchors. Beyond groceries, they offer banking, prescriptions, and even daily check-ins. Today, 99% of older Tokyo residents live within 500 meters of one.

Germany and Austria have taken different routes. Germany invests heavily up front,€100,000–€200,000, to support rural stores. Austria provides smaller recurring subsidies. Both test mobile shops and require feasibility studies before releasing funds.

Different tools, same recognition: supermarkets are critical infrastructure.

What closing a store actually costs

When the last supermarket closes, it is not just groceries that vanish. It is fresh vegetables. It is passing conversations. It is the ability to age in place without a car. What remains are longer drives, quieter villages, and rising healthcare bills.

The fix is not complicated. But it requires reframing supermarkets for what they are: not just retailers, but public health infrastructure. Every store that closes shifts costs from a retail balance sheet to a healthcare budget. The savings are private. The costs are public.

In aging societies, someone will pay for keeping older adults fed, connected, and healthy. The question is whether that happens at the supermarket till or in the hospital ward.

Gen X and Baby Boomers control most consumer spending, yet they are the least influenced by advertising. Brands keep pouring billions into youth-focused campaigns that captivate younger audiences, but fail to resonate with the older consumers who matter most to the bottom line.

In a marketplace where private labels are gaining ground and inflation is squeezing wallets, brands must rethink how they connect with aging audiences. Or risk losing them entirely.

The generational gap in ad engagement

The divide is stark. Data from YouGov Profiles shows that 57% of Gen Z and 50% of Millennials say ads influence their purchasing decisions. For Gen X, that drops to 36%. For Baby Boomers, only 29%.

Older consumers hold the lion’s share of spending power, yet they are tuning out. As the average consumer age rises, evolving ad strategies is not optional.

For younger consumers, ads double as entertainment. 59% of Gen Z and 56% of Millennials expect advertisements to entertain them. Less than half of Gen X and approximately one third of Baby Boomers expect to be entertained.

52% of Gen Z enjoy ads featuring their favourite celebrities, compared to 28% of Gen X and just 18% of Boomers. The appetite for celebrity-led, spectacle-driven advertising is concentrated in the youngest consumers. It fades sharply with age.

That does not mean older consumers have switched off entirely. The appetite is there. But the kind of entertainment brands are producing, built for social sharing and celebrity recognition, is not what connects with them.

Older consumers are not disinterested in advertising. They are looking for something different.

What older consumers actually want

For aging audiences, credibility matters more than spectacle.

Here is what stands out in the YouGov data: 65% of all adults say they appreciate seeing “real-looking people” in ads. That holds across every generation, from Gen Z (66%) to Boomers (63%). The demand for believable representation is universal. Yet the advertising industry keeps defaulting to aspirational casting and celebrity-led creative that resonates only with the youngest group.

Baby Boomers in particular reward reliability and messaging that respects their needs without pandering. In practice, that means believable casting rather than aspirational fantasy. Useful product information rather than pure entertainment. A respectful tone, realistic settings, and less of the symbolic youth coding that dominates most brand campaigns. Proof over polish.

Brands sticking to celebrity endorsements and flashy social-first campaigns are not just choosing a different style. They are choosing a style that actively fails to connect with the consumers who spend the most.

Missed connections

And yet they are not being spoken to. 56% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials say they are more likely to engage with advertising that reflects their preferences. That figure dips for older consumers, but not by as much as you might expect: 43% of Gen X and 37% of Boomers say the same. That is not a small group. That is a large share of your highest-value consumers who are actively telling you they want relevant advertising but are not getting it.

Drawing conclusions from the wrong evidence

The gap is not just about message. It is also about medium, and about the conclusions brands draw from the data they collect.

Nearly half of Gen Z (48%) and Millennials (48%) say they recommend products they have seen advertised on posters and billboards. For Gen X, that drops to 34%; for Boomers, 23%. Younger consumers are also far more likely to act on outdoor advertising digitally: 54% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials frequently search for products on their phones after seeing a poster or billboard. For Gen X the figure is 40%; for Boomers, 27%. On social media the gap is wider still: 57% of Gen Z and 51% of Millennials say they are more likely to engage with ads on social media than on regular websites. For Gen X that drops to 31%. For Boomers, just 18%.

The standard reading of this data is that older consumers are hard to reach. But consider what is actually being measured. The advertising they are responding to was not designed for them. The creative is built around celebrity, spectacle, and entertainment codes that appeal to younger audiences. The channels where engagement is tracked are the channels where older consumers are least active. And the behaviours being counted, searching, sharing, recommending, are the ones younger consumers are most inclined to do regardless.

If advertising does not speak to you, does not appear where you are, and does not reflect anything about your life, why would you respond? Low engagement from older consumers does not prove they are unreachable. It proves no one is making a serious effort to reach them.

Inflation and the rise of private labels

With inflation biting and private labels gaining share, brands have never faced more pressure to hold on to their older customers. Price-conscious consumers are increasingly willing to switch if brand advertising does not deliver relevance and trust.

Ignore aging consumers, and they will walk. To cheaper alternatives with stronger perceived value.

This is not an argument against youth

Younger generations are cultural trendsetters. They are vocal, digital-first, and socially engaged. Brands cannot afford to ignore them. And many will argue, rightly, that building a future customer base requires investing in younger audiences today.

But acquiring tomorrow’s customers does not mean neglecting the ones who pay the bills right now. The younger groups set trends. The older ones hold the wallets. Both need investment, and right now the balance is off.

A question worth asking

In your top categories by revenue, what share of that revenue comes from Gen X and Baby Boomers, and how much of your advertising is built to connect with them? If those numbers do not match, that is where the problem starts.

Looking ahead

As the average consumer age rises, advertising must grow up with it. The brands that will win are those that prioritize credibility over flash, reflect the realities of aging lives rather than stereotypes, and build trust through consistency rather than gimmicks.

Older consumers are not invisible. They are powerful, selective, and increasingly central to market growth. Brands that evolve will capture this opportunity. Those who do not may find themselves talking to an audience that is not listening, because it cannot afford to care.

When Albert Heijn quietly discontinued its koekjes met kaneel, Carla, 67, was furious. It was her weekly indulgence, something she had bought for decades. She wrote to customer service, tried three other brands, and even scoured online forums for a substitute. Eventually, she gave up and moved on.

That little moment tells a bigger story.

Marketers often assume older shoppers are unwaveringly loyal once acquired. Get them in the door, and you have got them for life. But as Byron Sharp argued in How Brands Grow, loyalty is routinely overstated. Even long-term customers defect more than managers think. The reality: most shoppers, regardless of age, have repertoires of brands they rotate through.

And yet, when I talk to category and brand managers about older shoppers, I often hear the same refrain: “We’re not too worried about them.” Older consumers are thought to prefer national brands over private labels and remain steadfast once acquired. That belief shifts marketing attention toward younger families, the so-called “fresh opportunities.”

But is this perception accurate? No.

The myth of loyalty

Few studies confirm that older consumers are inherently brand loyal, and most that do focus outside of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG).

Music is the classic case. Research shows that older adults tend to prefer songs popular in their late teens and twenties. The same pattern shows up in perfumes and cars, where older buyers often stick with legacy names like Peugeot, Renault, or Citroën.

But is that the effect of aging, or simply the emotional imprint of youth?

Why we love the brands of our youth

The answer lies in memory. Our favorite brands in music, cars, or perfumes are not just products. They are anchors in the formative years of late adolescence and early adulthood, when identity, independence, and relationships crystallize.

That first perfume was not just a scent; it was the smell of late nights and first loves. That car was not just a means of transport; it was freedom. Those songs were not background noise; they were the soundtrack of becoming ourselves.

These connections run deep. When older consumers gravitate toward familiar brands, they are not just making practical choices. They are reconnecting with who they were. This is less about aging itself and more about cohort effects: shared experiences and cultural influences that embed certain brands in memory and keep them there.

Does nostalgia drive CPG choices?

So how does emotional attachment play out in the world of CPG? Nostalgia is far less powerful here than in categories like music, cars, or perfume. The difference comes down to product turnover.

Music can be revisited on vinyl, CDs, or streaming services. Perfumes and heritage car brands often keep their classics alive. But the supermarket shelf is ruthless: products appear, disappear, reformulate, and rebrand. Many of the items older consumers once loved simply no longer exist, making it impossible to recreate the same nostalgic bond.

Phua et al. (2020) and Uncles & Lee (2006) found little difference in brand preferences between younger and older consumers in CPG. For brand managers, this is encouraging: older shoppers are not locked into the products of their youth. They are just as open as younger consumers to trying something new, provided they’re exposed to it. In CPG, visibility and reach matter more than nostalgia.

Older shoppers are not set in their ways. In CPG, their purchasing patterns look remarkably similar to everyone else's.

And that insight matters. Too often, older consumers are written off under the assumption of fixed loyalty, while marketing budgets chase supposedly "more flexible" younger audiences. Sharp's (2010) work reminds us why that is a mistake: growth comes from reaching as many buyers as possible, not just targeting supposed loyalists. The same applies here. By engaging older consumers alongside younger ones, through broad, inclusive campaigns, brands can reach a segment they are currently leaving on the table.

Loyalty, but only sometimes

Brand loyalty among older consumers is real, but it is not universal. Where products carry strong emotional or identity weight, attachment runs deep. The car someone drove in their twenties, the perfume they wore on first dates, or the band that defined their youth. These are not just purchases; they are markers of self. It is no surprise that loyalty in these categories can last a lifetime.

The mistake comes when marketers assume the same dynamic applies everywhere. In fast-moving, low-stakes categories like CPG, the evidence shows older shoppers are just as exploratory as everyone else. What looks like “loyalty” in one domain does not automatically translate into another.

The real question for marketers is not “Are older consumers loyal?” but “Which categories reward loyalty, and which reward reach?”

What this means in practice

If your brand is in CPG and your team assumes older consumers are already locked in, check your panel data. Look at switching rates, repertoire sizes, and penetration among over-45s. The research is clear: older consumers switch, experiment, and compare just as much as younger ones. They are not locked in. They never were.

That assumption of automatic loyalty is not just wrong. It is expensive. It justifies under-investing in a large, growing segment on the basis of a stereotype that the evidence does not support. Brands that treat older shoppers as already won are not protecting a base. They are ignoring one.

One-third of adults over 45 report feeling lonely. Nearly one in four adults over 65 are socially isolated. In 2020, about 35% of U.S. households included someone over 65. A third of those, 14.3 million households, were single-person.

These are not statistics about a fringe group. These are your consumers.

And the world they navigate every day is becoming less human, not more.

The disappearing social infrastructure

Traditional social structures once provided older adults with a buffer against isolation: extended families, close-knit communities, familiar faces in familiar places. Urbanization, smaller families, and longer lives have changed that.

But something else is changing it faster. The everyday touchpoints where older consumers used to have human contact are being stripped away in the name of efficiency.

Supermarkets are replacing cashiers with self-checkout. Banks are closing branches. Customer service is routed through chatbots and automated phone menus. Post offices, travel agents, local shops — all thinning out or going digital. Each one of these was a small moment of human interaction. A conversation at the till. A familiar face at the counter. A reason to leave the house and be recognized.

For younger consumers, this shift is mostly an inconvenience. For older consumers, especially those living alone, it is the quiet removal of their social world.

The health costs are real

This matters beyond sentiment. Loneliness rewires health.

Physically, it raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure. It weakens the immune system and contributes to obesity. Cognitively, it accelerates decline and increases dementia risk. Psychologically, it is linked to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

The overall impact is so severe that researchers equate it to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness shortens lives, worsens quality of life, and drives up healthcare costs. This is not a soft issue. It is a public health crisis with hard numbers.

The AI temptation

The technology sector has noticed the problem. AI-powered companions, chatbots designed to simulate conversation and reduce feelings of isolation, are drawing significant research attention.

Some of the findings are striking. De Freitas et al. (2024) found that AI-based conversations can reduce loneliness to levels comparable to those of human interaction. Older adults who used an AI companion reported sustained reductions in loneliness after just a week. What stood out most was that people valued the feeling of being heard. The AI remembered their stories, asked follow-up questions, and offered the kind of attentiveness often missing in daily life.

But a promise does not erase risk. AI can simulate empathy. It cannot replace it. It cannot offer the nuance of shared experience or the comfort of physical presence.

The parallels with social media are instructive. Platforms designed to connect people often left users feeling lonelier. The danger with AI companions is the same: substitution dressed as support. Given the shortage of healthcare personnel in aging societies, there is a real risk that AI drifts from augmenting human contact to replacing it. And relying on machines for companionship could erode the motivation or ability to maintain human social skills, deepening isolation in the long run.

AI companions may help fill gaps where human contact is genuinely unavailable. But they are a response to a failure, not a solution to it. The question is not whether AI can simulate connection. It is why we are building a world that requires it.

The retailers that get it right

Some retailers have recognized that their relationship with older consumers extends beyond the transaction.

Dutch food retailer Albert Heijn is the clearest example. Beyond groceries, it has hosted Christmas lunches, organized community dinners, and created “mini-restaurants” with dinner vouchers, all aimed at tackling loneliness through real-world contact. The store becomes a social space. The brand becomes part of the community. And the consumer who comes for lunch comes back to shop.

This is not charity. It is a commercial strategy built on a simple insight: for older consumers, especially those living alone, a brand that provides human contact provides something no competitor with a faster self-checkout can match.

The opportunity is not limited to retail. Any business with a physical presence, a service interaction, or a customer relationship has the same option: invest in human contact and build the kind of loyalty that efficiency-driven competitors cannot replicate.

The obvious objection

Retailers will argue that automation exists for a reason. Staff is expensive and hard to find. Self-checkouts reduce the cost per transaction. Chatbots handle volume that human teams cannot. If older consumers spend less per visit than younger families, why should we invest in serving them more personally?

The argument is understandable. It is also incomplete.

Older consumers may spend less per trip, but they shop more frequently. They are often the most regular visitors a store has. And in a market where private labels are growing, and switching costs are low, the retailer who provides a reason to come back beyond price has an advantage that no efficiency gain can replicate. A community dinner costs less than a loyalty program. A staffed checkout lane is cheaper than winning back a customer who left.

Albert Heijn’s model is not expensive. It is Christmas lunches and dinner vouchers, not permanent headcount increases. The investment is modest. What it builds, a store that older consumers think of as theirs, is not.

The question is not whether retailers can afford to invest in human contact. It is whether they can afford to keep removing it.

What retailers could ask themselves

How many of your customer touchpoints used to involve a human and no longer do? What did those interactions cost, and what did they build? For your older consumers, what has replaced them?

The aging population is growing. Loneliness among older adults is growing faster. Retailers that respond to this, not with AI chatbots but with real human contact, community programs, and spaces where older consumers feel seen, will build something that discounts and digital convenience cannot touch.

A connected, compassionate aging society will not be built by machines alone. But retailers that understand the value of being human in an increasingly automated world will find themselves closer to their most valuable consumers than any algorithm can get.

Share

Links to the Albert Heijn initiatives:

Nieuws - Albert Heijn - Zoekresultaten (ah.nl)

https://nieuws.ah.nl/week-tegen-eenzaamheid-albert-heijn-en-resto-vanharte-nodigen-klanten-uit-voor-verbindende-buurtdiners/#

https://nieuws.ah.nl/week-tegen-eenzaamheid-albert-heijn-en-resto-vanharte-nodigen-klanten-uit-voor-verbindende-buurtdiners/#

https://nieuws.ah.nl/honderden-kerstlunches-in-albert-heijn-winkels/

Buurtlunches in 500 Albert Heijn winkels (ah.nl)

That statement is as shortsighted as it is offensive. Older adults today live longer, healthier lives than previous generations. They control substantial disposable income. And they are growing as a share of the population faster than any other segment.

Yet the attitude behind that shrug is more common than most marketers would admit. Youth culture dominates pitch decks, strategy sessions, and creative briefs. Brand managers, many of them young themselves, naturally gravitate toward audiences that feel familiar. They understand the codes of their peers better than those of people decades older. The result: a demographic with more wealth, more stability, and rising influence gets treated as an afterthought.

That is not a blind spot. It is a strategic misstep.

The numbers behind the dismissal

The spending data makes the case plainly.

In the United States, consumers over 65 already account for 22% of all consumer spending, more than $2.1 trillion annually (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). In the EU, the picture is sharper still: over 43% of consumer spending in 2020, worth €1.7 trillion, came from households headed by someone over 65 (Eurostat).

In North America and Europe, 24% of the population will be over 65 within the next decade, making older consumers one of the fastest-growing segments. Median net worth rises with age, with older groups holding substantially more wealth than younger ones. And Eurostat data shows that purchasing power remains more consistent across age groups than most marketers assume. The “spending falls off a cliff” story is convenient. It is not well supported.

These numbers are rising. Yet many brand managers continue to direct their focus toward younger consumers.

Why Brands Default to Youth

Part of the bias is personal. Young brand managers target what they know. But another driver is the persistent myth that older consumers are not worth the investment because they will not be customers for long.

That myth does not survive contact with the data. Life expectancy has increased. Healthy years have increased faster. A 65-year-old today may have two decades of active consumer life ahead. Writing them off as short-term is not hard-headed strategy. It is lazy arithmetic.

And overlooking them is not a neutral choice. It is a decision to walk away from revenue.

What older consumers are actually worth

GfK’s FutureBuy study (2016) found that older shoppers are increasingly adopting technology, undermining the stereotype that they are digitally disconnected. Many are willing to pay more for high-quality products, particularly those linked to health. And while they are not inherently loyal (as the research on CPG switching shows), they tend to operate within tighter repertoires, where effort and error costs make predictability a design outcome rather than a personality trait.

For brands seeking long-term relationships and reliable revenue, that stability is not a drawback. It is an advantage.

Where the opportunity is clearest: food

Few industries are better positioned to benefit from this demographic shift than food.

Older consumers are looking for products that support aging bodies, such as foods rich in protein, fiber, or heart-healthy ingredients. They want convenience that respects their reality: packaging that is easy to open, portion-controlled meals, ready-to-eat solutions that do not feel like concessions. And they respond to familiarity, with classic flavors or reintroduced products connecting with existing routines rather than demanding new ones.

These are not niche preferences. They describe a large and growing share of the market. And yet, walk through any supermarket and count how many products are designed with a 65-year-old in mind. The gap between demand and supply is visible on every shelf.

Getting it right

Reaching older consumers comes with its own requirements. Their media habits differ from those of younger audiences, and they are quick to detect condescension. Messaging must be direct, respectful, and never patronizing.

The starting points are practical: conduct research that includes older consumers rather than screening them out, partner with organizations focused on aging to pressure-test assumptions, and combine traditional media with relationship-driven outreach. Done well, these efforts do more than attract older consumers. They can strengthen trust across age groups and improve overall brand clarity.

The real question

The aging population is not a problem to manage. It is a market to serve. Brands that develop strategies for older consumers alongside younger ones will reach an affluent, expanding, and underserved demographic. Brands that continue to ignore them will lose ground to competitors who saw it first.

The evidence is not new. The market is not small. The only question is how long brands will keep looking the other way.

Links:

1. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:shares

2. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/ecb_surveys/hfcs/html/index.en.html

3. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/hbs_exp_t135__custom_12516013/default/table?lang=en

4. https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm

5. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/1b4cdeb3-c591-48e5-9ff0-4e44494a7761?lang=en