Effective Communication with our Aging Population

Abstract

This article examines the role of personal characteristics in time spent shopping, including search, purchase, and postpurchase activities. The emphasis is on understanding relationships between the psychological quality of time perceptions (the extent to which individuals view structure and purpose in their daily lives), social and demographic variables, and shopping time, including how those ages 45 and older form into segments based on those perceptions. The findings show that the addition of time perceptions to regression equations containing social and demographic variables increases the explained variance and that a time perception segmentation typology provides insights into ways retailers can benefit from a target market strategy based on how consumers view time.