Carstensen Laura L, Hershfield Hal E
Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles.
Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2021 Aug 1;30(4):327-334. doi: 10.1177/09637214211011468. Epub 2021 Jun 25.
The tremendous heterogeneity in functional and demographic characteristics of the over-65 age group presents challenges to effective marketing and public health communications. Messages grounded on tacit assumptions that older people are frail, incompetent, and needy risk being overlooked by most of the older population; on the other hand, ignoring age-associated vulnerabilities is problematic. We argue that while traditional approaches to market segmentation based on chronological age often fail, reliable age differences in motivation can inform the types of information that older people typically prefer, attend to, and remember. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that as future time horizons grow limited - as they typically do with age - emotional goals are prioritized over goals that focus on exploration. As time left becomes more limited, positive messages are remembered better than negative, and products that help people savor the moment are preferred over those that benefit the long-term future. Relatedly, acknowledging individual strengths and personal resilience are likely to be especially appealing to older people.
65岁以上年龄组在功能和人口特征方面存在巨大的异质性，这给有效的市场营销和公共卫生宣传带来了挑战。基于老年人虚弱、无能和需要帮助等隐含假设的信息，很可能会被大多数老年人忽视；另一方面，忽视与年龄相关的脆弱性也存在问题。我们认为，虽然基于实足年龄的传统市场细分方法往往行不通，但动机方面可靠的年龄差异可以为老年人通常更喜欢、关注和记住的信息类型提供参考。社会情感选择性理论认为，随着未来时间范围变得有限——这通常会随着年龄增长而发生——情感目标会优先于关注探索的目标。随着剩余时间变得更加有限，积极信息比消极信息更容易被记住，帮助人们品味当下的产品比那些有利于长期未来的产品更受青睐。与此相关的是，承认个人优势和个人复原力可能对老年人特别有吸引力。
