MRG Evening Meeting – The ’90s Are The Age Of The Older Woman
“The ’90s are the age of the older woman.”
So said the press last year, prompting IPC Magazines set up the PrimeTime research to investigate this phenomenon. At the MRG Evening Meeting on 3 August 1999 Christina Hartley, head of ad marketing at IPC, Caroline Melville, senior ad marketing executive for IPC Connect and IPC TX and Jenny Bowden, head of ad marketing at IPC Central Sales and Solutions, presented highlights from the findings of the PrimeTime research.
Defining people by age is so old fashioned, but all too often many advertisers and media planners ignore the 35+ age group. PrimeTime set out to gain a clearer understanding of women aged 35+ and to determine how powerful these women are as consumers. The research aimed to explode a few myths about this market, particularly that such women stick with the same brands and products as they get older.
The questionnaire covered topics including family, health, finance, shopping, food and cooking, sex, beauty, cars and advertising. Qualitative research in the form of focus groups was carried out in April ’98 and quantitative research including many face-to-face in-house interviews followed in August ’98.
Amongst the findings were that by 2005 seven out of ten women will be aged 35 and over; over 70% of women currently work with 39% of 35-64 year old women being the chief income earners and collectively are worth £99 billion. Despite this they are still largely unrecognised as consumers.
Media Consumption:
- 51% do not listen to commercial radio
- 58% never go to the cinema
- 60% watch peak-time TV
- 60% read at least 3 newspapers a week
- 93% read magazines
The research results found that women’s independence due to work, changes in attitudes in all the areas covered and state of mind influence their choices as consumers. As consumers they can be defined in three cluster groups: Decisive Leaders (with a higher percentage of ABC1s), Discerning Loyal Followers and Fickle Leaders. Across the three groups the average age is 46.
Beauty Products Myth:
It is a fallacy that women aged 35+ stick to the same brands; 63% of women surveyed do not always buy the same beauty products and 72% believe that beauty advertisers should talk to women over 40, but don’t.
Myth: They cook from scratch:
No they don’t; they prefer convenience foods, takeaways or eating out.
Myth: They drive Runarounds:
- 66% disagree with this
- 28% chose a car by engine size and performance and not by the colour
- 84% believe car manufacturers should be talking to women
- Over 50% of cars are chosen by women; 57% own their own car and there will soon be more women on the roads than men
PrimeTime clearly demonstrates that age is not a factor in determining types of consumers, it’s all about attitude: 35+ women are an extremely desirable target and should not be ignored.
Some members of the audience felt dismayed that media is still bought by set age bands, probably due to the structure of NRS and TGI data and that the PrimeTime research should not have included women under 40 or even under 45. Was the 35+ age range pandering to advertisers and media planners who all too often don’t look beyond 25-34 year old women? Is this because it’s such a young industry despite having so many successful older women running the show?
It was pointed out that advertisers are criticised for using young, beautiful models but research has shown that older women prefer to see women their own age or 10 years younger, whilst younger consumers are more likely to be alienated by advertisements featuring older people.
The common view from the floor was that it would seem sensible to look more closely at life stages alongside age. The NRS Sagacity research is a useful model and BARB is introducing similar research at the end of the year.