Ageing and the Effectiveness of Touchpoints

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These charts were constructed using ZenithOptimedia’s ROI Tracker – a consumer research-based tool that measures and helps plan marketing activities across the range of brand contact touchpoints.

You can read more about this product and what it seems to tell us about age and touchpoint effectiveness by downloading this article.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article with my comments:

The ROI Tracker shows how contact effectiveness changes as consumers get older. At an all-touchpoints level, it shows that contact influence and levels of brand association decline swiftly as we get older. The older you are the less likely you are to respond to advertising. I suspect this is partly because older people are more familiar with brands and their advertising, probably more fixed in their ways and also less targeted by most advertising.

The big flaw in this type of analysis is that it doesn’t take account of type of the nature of products each age group are purchasing. If I am 20 I am not that likely to be thinking about buying a washing machine, or am I falling into the trap of stereotyping? Overall, I agree with the article’s analysis other than the dreaded “more fixed in their ways”. Ahhhh

The influence of internet search rises as we get older, exceeding TV advertising in influence by the time we are 45. Other online touchpoints that display similar growth in influence as we get older include product comparison websites, brand websites, retailer sites and consumer opinion sites.
There may be a simple reason for this: as we get older we become wealthier but, paradoxically, steadily more value conscious. We are more likely to look for bargains (in-store promotions also get more influential with age), and the internet is a great place to go looking for bargains.

The rationale for the results might be true in some circumstances but I think is way to simplistic. The reason for the importance of search is much more likely to be influenced by the complexity and value of the shopping basket of products being purchased by the different age groups.

Here are the definitions of the things being measured. Brand Association = the percentage of consumers associating each brand with each touchpoint. Influence = the relative influence of each touchpoint on purchasing.

No doubt about it, this is an interesting type of analysis. I counsel about making too many conclusions based on these high level results. I am sure the devil is in the detail of the analysis. Anybody got any thoughts?

Original Post: http://www.20plus30.com/blog/2009/11/ageing-and-effectiveness-of-touchpoints.html