Carol Orsborn, author and boomer expert, is pleased to share with you an excerpt from: BOOM: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer—the Baby Boomer Woman (Amacom Books, Fall of 2006, by Mary Brown and Carol Orsborn, Ph.D).

BOOM features close to 40 top marketers from a broad range of industries as contributing authors, including Ford, Intel, Logitech, Wellpoint, Marriott’s and more. The foreword is by retail guru Paco Underhill.

CHAPTER FOUR:

She’s Motivated
The 3-D View of HER

In Chapter Three, we shared a series of broad-stroke portraits of the Baby Boomer woman with you, considering her life stage challenges and generational influences. But this is not the whole story, for within each life stage, psychological, social, and even spiritual factors will have an impact, both consciously and subconsciously, on the individual woman’s receptivity to products and services. What is needed is a 3-D view of her that takes an even deeper dive into the very heat of marketing: what is motivating her purchasing decisions on the archetypal level.

On Appealing to Her Psyche
Michael Bohn,
Director of Brand Marketing (Bosch, Siemens, Thermador, Gaggenau)
BSH Home Appliances Corporation

Demographic segmentation criteria like age need to be augmented by deeper insight into consumer lifestyles. A progressive city dweller, age 50, likely has more in common with the 30-year-old social activist next door than with her 48-year-old fellow Boomer in rural Kentucky, deeply rooted in a conservative belief system. Consequently, at BSH North America we segment our target market psychographically. Then, we utilize our portfolio of four upscale brands—Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau, and Thermador—to achieve the closest possible fit with each audience, and each type of female Boomer.

As an example, the Thermador brand is designed to appeal to Leading-Edge Boomers with empty nest concerns like connecting, questing, finding new passions, new ways of expressing her individuality, and redefining the role she plays in life. The Bosch brand, on the other hand, is geared more towards Trailing-Edge Boomer women who find themselves sandwiched between eldercare, childcare and their own career, constantly multitasking. What she needs is not a hobby or a means of socializing, but a highly efficient problem-solver in her kitchen. Consequently, Bosch products (and marketing) emphasize convenience, ease of use, and brilliant results with the least amount of effort and the least infraction on the already busy household (thus, for example, Bosch’s emphasis on extremely low noise emission).

Read an excerpt of the fourth chapter (Adobe PDF)

Purchase BOOM: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer—the Baby Boomer Woman from Amazon.com.