| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 企業管理學系 === 92 === This research probes the influence of the elder and the middle-age’ lifestyle, values and cognitive age on their decision-making styles and needs. We employ literature discussion and empirical research to look into the consuming behavior of the two generations. We try to find out the differences between the two generations’ psychological set and consuming decision in order to provide the referent resources about satisfying the elder consumers’ need and defining proper products and services for the business or government institution who may be interested in the elder consuming market.
This research used questionnaire survey to investigate the consuming behavior of the elder consumer who are above 60 years old and the middle-age consumers who are 45-60 years old. The final valid samples are 434 persons. After literature review and discussion, we build up the framework of this research and develop four decision-making styles: “analysis”, “impulsion”, “conservation” and “fashion”.
According to cluster analysis, the lifestyle of consumers were separated into three groups, they are ”healthy-family”, ”devotion-conservative” and ”quality-grace”. And the values was divided into two, they are groups “belongings” and “drifting with the tide”. And through the data analysis, we have gotten the conclusions as below:
1.Different elder consumers’ lifestyle, values and cognitive age have significant effect on the decision-making style and need.
2.Different middle-aged consumers’ lifestyle and cognitive age have significant effect on the decision-making style and need.
3.The anticipation with the future of middle-aged consumers will be stronger than what they need now.
4.There have no difference between the elder and middle-aged consumers’ decision-making styles.
5.The elder consumers’ needs are stronger than the middle consumers’.
We also address several practical marketing suggestions that depend on the results:
1.Before the firms enter the elder consuming market, they should understand about the elder consumer’s psychological conditions and the way of their life.
2.The firms can segment the elder and middle-aged consuming market by lifestyle and cognitive age, then provide the products and services those satisfy them depends on different needs. Furthermore, the firms can design the appropriate marketing strategy in light of their decision-making styles to encourage and raise the elder and middle-aged consumers’ desire to purchase.
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