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For decades, marketers have been offering senior citizen discounts on a variety of products and services. Have these discounts been effective marketing tools? Which seniors take advantage of them? For what products and services are they most often used? We posed these questions to 374 women age 65 and older throughout the Greater Kansas City metropolitan area. (See the Appendix for the research design.) The responses yielded some new marketing insights into the differences between those elderly consumers who use senior citizen discounts and those who do not. We will briefly describe the research findings, then, provide some practical applications and recommendations for marketing discount programs to older consumers, and finally, discuss their significance for marketers.
BACKGROUND
Discount programs for elderly consumers vary in application and structure, ranging from highly structured group programs such as those of the American Association of Retired Persons to the 5 percent, Wednesday only, discount offered by the Eastbrook Super Foods in Montgomery, Alabama (Norris, 1988). Some discount offers encompass all of a store's merchandise, such as the Famous-Barr Oasis Club Program for seniors, which includes "a 10 percent discount on purchases in the store on specified days': while other programs are product or department specific, such as K-Mart's providing savings in pharmaceutical, health aids and optical products (Bivins, 1984).
Some programs are sponsored by governmental agencies, which recruit merchants to offer these discounts. For example, the Ohio Commission on Aging sponsors the Golden Buckeye Card program, with which seniors can receive discounts of 5 to 50 percent on a wide variety of products and services. By 1982 there were 32,000 businesses participating in this statewide program (Jones, 1983a). South Carolina, California, and Texas, among other states, offer statewide dental discount programs for the elderly (Jones, 1983b). Public transportation facilities frequently offer senior discounts. The Dallas Area Transit Agency offers bus transportation for 15 cents rather than the standard 75 cents (Austin, 1990). In addition, many recreational services, such as public golf courses, practice discounting to seniors (Tedrick, 1986).
The minimum age for most of these programs ranges from 50 to 65. Often, in travel-related industries, discounts are offered to spouses and traveling companions of seniors (Wade, 1990). A few discount programs base eligibility, in part, on income; for example,...