Dick Stroud is the founder of 20plus30, a marketing strategy consultancy specialising in the 50 plus market. He is the UK’s leading expert on using interactive channels to communicate with the over-50s market.
Skype Name: dickstroud
News, views and opinions about the most powerful group of consumers - the 50-plus market.
I have been amazed how long it has taken UK franchise companies to target the homecare sector. Brightstar, a US company, appears to have got the idea with 130 locations currently open the company has plans for an additional 500 locations in the next five years.
Maybe there are such operations running in the UK? Dick Stroud
Labels: Care
Harris Poll has asked Americans about their trust of financial institutions (this includes all sorts from banks to insurance companies) and discovered an interesting generational difference.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of Gen Xers (those aged 33-44) and 61% of Baby Boomers (those aged 45-63) say they do not consider any of these to be honest and trustworthy compared to 52% of Echo Boomers (those aged 18-32) and 53% of Matures (those aged 64 and older). So grandparents and Yoof have more trust than their parents. Dick Stroud
Labels: Finance
Back in July 2007 I wrote about a social networking site called TeeBeeDee.com that was: “founded to provide a voice for the wisdom of our crowd – those of us who have learned from our life experiences and want to keep on growing at midlife.”
Anybody who has read my blog will know that I am highly sceptical of social networking that relies on the person’s age as the primary reason to get and retain their attention.
In a note to members, the founder said that the company had lacked the resources to continue developing the site: “Our business opportunity proved disappointing.” The site had raised more than $9 million but had only 70,000 unique visitors last month. Instead, they were quite content with using Facebook, which has seen its fastest growth in users over 55.
The article concludes that: “Baby boomers apparently did not want to be categorized away by their age.” Sad but inevitable. Here is the Reuter's note about the business. Dick Stroud
Labels: Social networking
The Pew Research Center has just released a 152 page report detailing the research results from a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,969 adults living in the US. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
It is pointless attempting to summarise such a long document, especially since I haven’t yet read it, but, from first glances it looks to contain some interesting ideas. The report covers
Labels: Market Research
McKinsey has just published a paper about how the spending behaviour of US consumers is changing and concluded that after two decades of unsustainably high levels it is returning to where it was in the past - much lower.
The bit of the research that really interested me was the difference in the expectations of how the stock market will behave over the next 30 years. Of course nobody has the faintest idea, but answering this question is a good proxy for people’s optimism about the future and the extent to which they perceive today’s economic problems as transitory. The chart says it all.
McKinsey concludes.
Finally, the historically poor returns of US equity markets during the lives of investors under the age of 45 may be creating a generation of equity-averse consumers. Less than half of US respondents believe that the stock market will produce returns above inflation over the next 30 years. Eighty-five percent of consumers from 36 to 45 believe that it won’t.What a fascinating conclusion. Do the young know something the old don’t? Methinks not. This is all about the dent this recession has created to the risk averseness of the younger age groups. A factor that will be around for a long time to come. Dick Stroud