Differences in advertising’s effectiveness across age groups

Abstract

Our research explores differences in cognitive evaluative measures of consumer buying behaviour and advertising’s effectiveness across age groups. We seek to ascertain if older segments show dissimilar memory structures and cognitive processes than younger targets, or if modern advertising approaches are simply lacking reach among older consumers. Our main measure of interest is mental availability—i.e. the ease at which a brand comes to mind in buying situations. We compare the scores of three underlying mental availability metrics across age groups and find differences primarily for associative penetration, a proxy for advertising reach. We then examine differences in other important cognitive evaluative measures of advertising’s effectiveness, such as the purchase funnel (narrowing down of alternatives for purchase) and product category knowledge. We detect additional differences that further illustrate why there are likely limits to advertising’s reach amongst older consumers. Hence, we stress the importance of using these cognitive evaluative measures to appraise the effectiveness of inclusive, cross-age advertising strategies in theory and practice.