In our visits, one of the problems we have found is the "fear" to develop food products especially designed for the elderly. In this sense, we have tried to analyze this problem and try to identify specific ways to overcome this barrier.
Feel free pelase to comment as you wish. Otherwise, we can comment about this on our next meeting the next wednesday.
The problem of marketing food for elderly
One of the biggest dangers associated with the marketing of a new food product is that a low initial success may involve the inability to sell the product after that first failure. Normally, any producer of such products depends on an end retailer, an establishment making the product available to the public.
With this in mind, in countries like Spain the final distributor is most of the times a medium or large surface, who as a standard practice when selling a new product, ask the manufacturer with a certain number of free units, so that these first units serve as a “test” for the new product. Should these units do not have the expected success; the product will hardly be claimed to the manufacturer again for sale.
These findings indicate that a food product with good features does not guarantee success and that it´s necessary to take into account other variables, mainly related to the way of getting specific food products to the market. We have taken into account two different scenarios:
Scenario 1: Developing specific food products for elderly
The food sector is an extremely broad field, where is difficult to differentiate from potential competitors. In a competitive situation, in which several products are perceived in their essential characteristics similarly, two factors are usually those who decide a choice: price and brand loyalty. Consumers who are guided by the price almost always buy the best priced product, and those who are loyal to a brand will buy the product of that brand, so to get a gap between its competitors, a product has to differentiate somehow. This differentiation must be achieved through a marketing process based primarily on that difference.
There are however major problems associated with conducting marketing of food products for elderly, but while marketing can be done based on the benefits of the products regarding the elderly, this collides with two major problems:
- The market for a food product is huge, so an effective campaign demands significant investments, which can only be undertaken by large manufacturers, but not by small and medium enterprises that can have a great product, but not enough resources to reach as many potential customers as possible.
- A problem with the food industry is that with few exceptions (infants), there is no food segregation by ages. The reason is obvious, except for the youngest child population, retailers may understand that the consumption of other existing products can be done by people of any age.
The problem behind this way of selling food products, is that under normal conditions, a product specially designed for the older population has to compete with products that are not, making it difficult to differentiate, not being the best conditions for the consumer to rigorously assess the virtues of one product over another.
The lack of specific spaces for the sale of products aimed at elderly is a significant barrier for products that impact on this sector of the population, a barrier that is bigger as lower is the manufacturer's ability to invest in differentiation through marketing.
If there were specific areas for selling this kind of products, most likely it will grant them a differentiation that otherwise they would not have. These new spaces would benefit all three parties involved in the purchase/sale:
- The consumer would have easy access to these products, being then familiar with the existence of specially focused products, better suited for elderly than for other ages.
- The final seller would give more visibility to products that previously could be "hidden" among other non-specific products, increasing its capacity of selling these elderly products.
- The producer would assume less risks when designing and developing products aimed specifically at older people, having specific areas where they will have a much higher visibility than in a traditional situation.
If a possible solution is to create separate areas for the sale of these products, it is because right now these areas doesn´t exist, and that is because the retailers have not identified this need among customers, or because there is not a minimum critical mass of this kind of products that would justify the existence of these separate areas.
It is necessary to promote actions among medium and large retailers, in order to evaluate the potential of specific areas devoted to food for elderly. This may involve doing an “inventory "of products that can be currently considered “food for elderly product” and arranging them on corridors dedicated to the elderly. This could be done trough pilot projects in medium or large retailers selected for this purpose.
Scenario 2: Developing non specific for elderly food products, but with application to them
There is a clear difficulty associated with the marketing of products with an exclusive focus on elderly, and (as has been commenting on the above scenario) although there are food products with a preeminent approach in some population groups, such as such products for the first years of life, there are few examples of specific food products for other age groups. However, it is getting more and more frequent finding products that are good for certain disorders or diseases: products that help regulating cholesterol and triglycerides, products that help getting a better intestinal transit, products that help regulating high blood pressure ... etc. The common denominator of these products is that while it may be especially good for the elderly, they are also good for broader age ranges.
It is normal for large producers to seek for the launching of products suitable for the majority of the population, as it is the way to maximize the profit of a product. Among the reasons that may explain this fact, these could be cited for their special relevance:
- From a commercial standpoint, the market of a specifically focused on a particular age range is necessarily smaller than that the potential market of a product with a broader approach.
- In countries like Spain, the ability of an elderly person to select one product over another can be reduced, as a result of a lower purchasing power, and as a lower purchasing activity. This is a point that can reduce the "attraction" of the producers to this market sector, as it can be associated with a relatively low impact on the overall sales of a producer.
An alternative way of marketing products with beneficial properties for the elderly can be focusing on specific disorders rather than a particular sector of the population. As an example, while the high blood pressure be a problem especially acute in the elderly, it is a problem that affects adults of all ages, and therefore, it is more helpful to convey that this product is good for regulating the blood pressure, rather than trying to sell it only to the elderly. There are numerous cases of products that are probably best suited for elderly, but are in fact consumed by various sectors of the population:
- Soy Milk
- Whole wheat products
- Skimmed products
- Products high in fiber
- Functional food (Activia, Danacol, etc.)
- Soluble Cereals soluble
It is likely that this approach will not be able to cover all the needs of the elderly, but it can be a way of providing products that meet disorders suffered by a good part of the population, and that become more acute in the elderly.
Thus, when transmitting to food producing companies the importance of working in the field of older people, it may be more appropriate to change the focus to those disorders, as this allows to appeal a wider range of potential customers of such products, while avoiding advertising themselves exclusively as "products for older people." However, this way of addressing the issue is a partial solution, as it can create a variety of products that would help treating some disorders, but without taking into account more specific elderly disorders.
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