A Literature Review and Future Research Direction on the Elderly Consumer

노인소비자에 관한 문헌고찰과 미래연구의 방향

This study intends to recognize the old as an independent consumer, and to examine the behavioral characteristics of the old through literature review. This study also tries to suggest the direction of study on the elderly consumers' behavior. It has been generally accepted that the elderly consumers are highly constricted in purchase behavior or in information process capacity by the decline of biological competence. But according to the literature review, this general viewpoint does not reflect the reality. The literatures say that the old consumers do not so much differ from the non-old consumers in behavioral characteristics. They rather seem to be more active consumers. Nevertheless, what they claim could be a fallacy due to the overspecialization of sample. And another direction of future research is to change the age boundary of the old. The existing studies were largely based on the distinction between the old and the non-old by the age of 60 or 65. It is possible that behavioral difference is diffused by the common purchasing patterns of cohort around the age of 60 or 65. Accordingly it would be a good attempt to widen the range of age group more than 10 years.