PhD graduate urges marketers not to ignore older consumers

Massey Business School PhD graduate Philip Mecredy investigated whether awareness, consideration, and purchases differ between older and younger consumers.

“My research was motivated by the ageing population globally and a lack of understanding of how ageing impacts consumer behaviour. Without knowing whether the purchase patterns of older consumers differ from younger consumers, marketers may be unwisely neglecting or ineffectively targeting older consumers,” Dr Mecredy says.

“The findings show that older consumers follow similar buying and loyalty patterns as younger consumers.”

Dr Mecredy’s research found that there are some low-involvement categories, such as toothpaste and supermarket store choice, where older consumers are slightly more loyal than younger consumers. However, these loyalty differences are minor and older consumers still regularly switch between a variety of different brands over time.

“The research also discovered that these increases in loyalty were driven by accumulated category experience - they have purchased from certain product categories over a longer period so have had more opportunity to work out what brands they do and don’t want to buy - rather than cognitive decline impacting their decision-making process.”

The 29-year-old also disproved that cognitive decline was having a major impact on older consumers purchasing new-to-market brands.

“What surprised me was how little of an impact cognitive decline had on the purchase patterns of older consumers. Older consumers still regularly buy new-to-market brands.”

Born and raised in Palmerston North, Dr Mecredy attended Palmerston North Boys’ High School before completing his Bachelor of Business Studies in Marketing and Finance at Massey’s Manawatū campus.

He was then offered the opportunity to undertake post-graduate study while gaining work experience for Consumer Insights Ltd, a former spin-out market research company of Massey Ventures Ltd, which was run by his supervisors Dr Pam Feetham and Professor Malcolm Wright from the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing.

After completing his Master of Business Studies, Dr Mecredy moved to Auckland to take up a role as an Assistant Lecturer in the School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing while completing his PhD. During this time, he was able to spend four months studying at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom with his co-supervisor Professor Phil Stern, while also playing cricket for Exeter Cricket Club.

Since completing his PhD, Dr Mecredy has been working for insights agency TRA (The Research Agency) as an Account Lead in the client service team. Working for TRA has given Dr Mecredy the perfect opportunity to combine his academic and commercial experience to help solve problems for some of New Zealand’s leading brands, such as Briscoe Group, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and NZ Post.

While his PhD is complete, Dr Mecredy’s research provides useful information for marketers which he hopes to continue to publish in journal articles. He is also collaborating on an academic project related to his PhD with Dr Feetham and Dr Lara Stocchi from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia.

“The research outlines a blueprint for studying how loyalty changes across age, as well as providing marketers with greater understanding of how to transition older consumers through the brand purchase funnel,” he says.

“The research provides marketers with more evidence that they shouldn’t neglect older people, but instead should be actively seeking to understand their needs and wants, and developing and marketing products towards them.”