How to reach out to silver consumers
27 Sep 2017 | Analyze & Realize
This is Rob Wires at the Vita Foods Asia in Singapore, and I'm here with Eris Hardibag from the consultancy firm Analyze and Realize.
Iris, one of the topics that we're going to be speaking about here at the show is, related to kind of reaching out to the so-called silver consumers.
What are some of the strategies that you can maybe do this and how do, how do they vary between Asia and Europe?
Yes, let's start with Europe.
In Europe it is kind of difficult to reach out to the elderly population because none of them wants to be identified as being old, so you can't really address this on the label, for instance.
The companies have problems selling products like 50 plus products, silver Age products.
As such, but what you have to do is bring to the consumer the beneficial effects, so the prevention of some decline in physical or mental performance, the prevention of dietary deficiencies, and so on.
That's the way how you can approach the consumers.
In Asia it's a bit different.
In Asia you can directly approach the elderly people as elderly people and also show that on the product packs.
So if you want to market these kind of products in the different regions, you have to establish different marketing concepts.
What types of ingredients are trending, should we say, when it comes to Nutritional products that may target the elderly consumer.
One important aspect for elderly people is, of course, high protein.
They need more proteins than the younger consumers, and they may need more of certain vitamins and minerals, but then there is also this big group of polyphenols which are interesting for the elderly population because they have this antioxidant effect.
Anti-inflammatory effect which may prevent some of the elderly diseases like heart disease or cognitive decline.
I guess the key issue is about the concept of preventative nutrition as opposed to because healthcare costs continue to surge.
What, what, what can we do as an industry maybe I guess to to try and take advantage of this platform.
What we need to do is improve the Nutrition of the aging population because they are getting older and older and they need to stay healthy for longer until a higher age, otherwise the medicinal cost will increase tremendously.
So what we need to do is move the time when the elderly people need support because they have a certain disease.
Move this age threshold to a higher age, and this can be done by preventional measures like improving their nutrition, adding more antioxidants, for instance.
Omega 3s and so on.
Do you think that these calls are coming?
Do you think that there's more happening from a new product innovation standpoint?
I'm sure about that because the population is aging.
The companies will see that there is a big market share now taken from elderly consumers, and of course the products will appear on the market.
I'm sure about that.
Thank you very much.
