It’s not how old you are but how you are old: A review on aging and consumer behavior

Abstract

The paper presents a review of 128 studies on the behavior of older consumers published in the last 35 years (from 1980 to 2014) in 35 peer-reviewed journals. The purpose of the procedure is twofold: First, we aim to summarize results on agerelated changes in consumer research. Second, by doing so, we evaluate the relative importance of age-related factors (chronological, biological, psychological, and social age as wells as life events and life circumstances) in research on older consumers. Results of the review show that research on older consumers is still dominated by investigations using chronological age. Influences of other aspects of the aging process, although recommended by previous research reviews and providing valuable insights, are still playing a minor role in the investigation of consumer behavior. Research with alternative age measures is still in an early, exploratory stage and future studies should include specific aspects as well as multitheoretical models of aging.

The Impacts of Brand Experiences on Customer Satisfaction and Electronic Word of Mouth

“…Parahoo et al (2014) investigated the influence of passengers' age on their usage of metro and tram services. Zniva and Weitzl (2016) reviewed the literature on older customer behaviour. Kylkilahti and Autio (2018) focused on the tactics of younger customers in daily service interactions.…”

A Theoretical Framework on the Determinants of Food Purchasing Behavior of the Elderly: A Bibliometric Review with Scientific Mapping in Web of Science

“…To this effect, we opted for the use of the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, since it ensured that unique patterns of document classification according to research areas were used; in addition, it had a sufficient volume of documents, scientific quality, and debugging [ 31 ]. The search terms were selected in line with previous research in the field of behavioral studies in the elderly [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. The temporal coverage was not limited, nor the documentary typology, which allowed the inclusion of articles from conferences and other sources such as books or book chapters that may be of interest in the analysis of such a specific research domain.…”

“…The initial search was screened and refined using the WoS “Marked list” function, applying multiple combinations with the selected keywords and the “Refine Results” option. In the initial searches, all records that could not be discarded without reading the full text were kept, and then the references contained in the selected studies were screened and compared with documents included in previous reviews [ 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”

“…Hence, if food habits change with age, it becomes important to highlight such changes in elderly consumers so that marketers can accordingly offer them their preferred products [ 17 , 18 ]. In this regard, the factor of heterogeneity holds another major significance, in that elderly consumers are important for marketers and retailers to consider, analyze and target as a separate consumer group [ 12 , 19 ]. Consumer behavior needs to be studied from the first moment the consumer is faced with a series of decisions to be made.…”

From School Benches Straight to Retirement? Similarities and Differences in the Shopping Behaviour of Teenagers and Seniors in Bratislava, Slovakia

“…The shopping behaviour of the consumer varies according to their age (Kohijoki and Marjanen, 2013;Moschis, 2003;Myers and Lumbers, 2008;Parment, 2013;Solomon et al, 2012;Zniva and Weitzl, 2016). An important aspect of retailing studies on personal characteristics and shopping involves the predictive relationship between those characteristics and shopping time (McDonald, 1994).…”