ABSTRACT
We report the results of an analysis of age effects on consumer buying behaviors across a total of 29 different consumer package good categories, several of which one would expect to change with age (e.g., categories related to workforce participation). Specifically, in terms of spending behaviors, we look at buying volume, brand loyalty, unit size, mean volume per shopping occasion, size loyalty, shopping trip frequency, inter-trip gap stability, time of day, day of week, store loyalty, and preferred store size. Our analysis reveals large differences across categories in terms of whether age had a significant increasing, decreasing, or no effect.
In addition, we investigate the effect of age on consumer responsiveness to marketers’ promotional activities, including feature advertising, in-store displays, and price promotions, which is a novel aspect of the investigation. Taken together, our results reveal few age differences in consumer response to key promotional activities.
