Aging population Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Aging population - Essay Example Shakespeare has beautifully described the life of a man. He further describes it, in terms of ages and names it seven ages of a man's life. These are ages are: an infant, a child, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the old age and finally mental dementia and death. In short, they were considered as a useless part of the society and were thus isolated. This very idea had and probably has penetrated the business community as well. This fact was quite reflective in the marketing activities and campaigns launched until recently. However, the time is changing now; the old people are getting more prominence in the business society. They are now considered an important segment of the society. Business society is giving more attention the aging population, especially in the industrialized world. Their changing needs and behaviors are tried to be addressed by the marketers in more efficient manner than ever before. This matter is quite encouraging that the need has been realized; however, a s a matter of fact, what is really missing is the direction to cater their changing behaviors and needs. Thus this paper is aimed to address the fact that how the old population in the industrialized country does affects the business strategist seeking to respond their changing needs.In formulating this paper, we would start with the fact that who the aged ones are, in current scenario. Later, we would explore the key features of the aging population and what characteristics and features make them different from others After discussing this, our discussion will lead to the point that what are the corresponding marketing challenges faced by the marketers, furthermore, we will evaluate the efforts of the business community done so far to address these challenge. Lastly, we would like to know that what can be done further to address those issues. (Heibing and Cooper 2004) What is 'Old' Universally there is not any agreed upon age for being called the 'old'. However, usually those who have passed a considerable age of their life are now retired or about to retire are considered as old. Though the age for retirement also varies from country to country, however, in general that ranges between fifty to sixty years. Thus any person beyond the age of retirement is considered as old. If we accept this definition and start to look for the generation that is going to be the old or aging population, we find that our recent aging population is baby boomers. Before moving further, it is essential to know who are baby boomers are, since it would help in building this topic further. Those people who are born between 1946 and 1964 in United States are called baby boomers. (Hess and Markson 1991) Though this phenomenon is referred to US population only but the people who were born in the same period in other industrialized countries also share the same features. The baby boomers w ere born during the economic upsurge in those economies. As a result, they were fortunate to have best possible education, as compared to rest of the world. On account of the fortunate period in which they were, in general, they had a wonderful childhood leading to a promising career and prosperous youth and adult life. Now this generation that has made a lot of money is entering in to the old age. Obviously, the big sum of money that they have gathered in this period has the potential to make them one the greatest market for the marketers of the industrialized world to capture. Aging Population in Various Countries Moving further, we can