Older consumers and technology: A critical systematic literature review

Abstract

Older consumers’ adoption and consumption of technologies continues to be an important research area. However, marketing scholarship on this topic risks unintentionally smuggling age stereotypes into its constructed theories. Such assumptions include older consumers’ adoption processes being complicated by health and social isolation issues and their low tech-skills. Although stereotypes hold a ‘kernel-of-truth’ and underpin meaningful research, they can transform from helpful heuristics to impediments to crafting reflexive scholarship. Therefore, this article reviews marketing literature on older consumers and technology. It develops a 2 × 3 typology to analyse 86 articles based on their portrayals of older consumers’ capabilities (incapable/capable) and technology orientations (resisting/discerning/seeking). The typology’s six emergent categories aim to turn age stereotypes into ‘productive tensions’ for researchers by encouraging critical reflexivity in ways that broaden future research possibilities. These possibilities include better accounting for older consumers who are skilled technology-seekers, and equally, non-adopters with non-technophobic reasons to resist adoption.