How Japanese Marketers Aim to Increase Sales in Older Markets by Changing Human Nature

While America’s economic wizards try to figure out how to extricate us from the worst economic downturn in seventy years, their Japanese counterparts are trying to change human nature in an attempt to restore vigorous health to the Japanese economy.

According to an article in the Washington Post this week, a push is on in Japan to reverse the buying behavior of “elder boys.” For a dozen consecutive years Japanese department store sales have fallen. Population shrinkage among the under-50 crowd is the reason.

To counter the negative effects of this demographic trend, Japanese business is looking to older people, especially men. The hope is that elders can be persuaded to return to return to the narcissistic and materialistically grounded behaviors of youth that cause cash registers to ring.

One can safely assume that sooner or later marketers in the U.S will pursue a similar strategy. But it work any better here than it will in Japan. Proponents of such a strategy appear totally unmindful of decades of research in adult development showing that the later life shift away from narcissistic and materialistic behaviors is developmental. It is a natural consequence of growing out of the years when focus on self and on materialistic metaphors of one’s self-image is important to social and vocational success.

Older people frequently complain about all the “stuff” in their lives. Later life is welcomed by many as a time for simplicity. It is also a time when self-centeredness typically gives way to others-centeredness.

Washington Post article on an amusing example of how many – shall we dare to say most? – marketers see older markets through the lens of their own worldviews rather than in terms of the older person’s worldview.

Seen through my eyes, most marketing to older people appears to be created by people who think of an older person as mainly an older version of their younger selves. However, that older person is likely so different from his or her younger self that they find it difficult to relate to the values of youth -- or even remember how much they once embraced them.

Those Japanese marketers are not likely to reverse the developmental changes that take place in the later years. Their efforts will be more fruitfully pursued in search of later life needs that can be more profitably catered to.

 

Comments

[Perry Gruber]

Nice piece reminding how thougth things are changing, they still remain the same....

[Atare E. Agbamu]

David --

The Japanese marketers are trying to turn day into night and vice versa. I wish them luck. They desperately need your message.

--Atare

[Atare E. Agbamu]

David --

The Japanese marketers are trying to turn day into night and vice versa. I wish them luck. They desperately need your message.

--Atare

[Ed]

Changing human nature? I think they'd get more results sooner if they tried controlling the weather.

[stellaf]

Hi,

It is such a nice stuff and I really like it. Thank you so much for sharing.

Stella

Real Estate

[Paul]

That's an interesting post. Would it be more reasonable to engage the older crowd with their natural orientation? Like something that engages them in helping others, but makes some sort of profit? I don't know how you do that, but that seems much more reasonable.

[lieben]

Interessante Informationen.

[Jeff Paul Internet Business]

I was just looking around for material on internet marketing and stumbled on your post. Nice post. I’m still looking for materials for my research.

[japanese words]

I think an important aspect to consider on this one is that the marketers are also in the older generation. As you mentioned there is a shrinking youth population which means that the majority of the work force relative to this number.

Can they get more men to shop...that I don't know.