Discovering Thai Senior Consumers’ Patterns of Consumption in Bangkok

Abstract

While technology and medical sciences have become advanced, people stay healthier, get wealthier, and live longer. It is expected that in the near future, many countries around the world will enter the so-called aging society. In Thailand, the number of people aged 60 and over will be doubled by the year 2025. That means older people will dominate the consumer market. However, there have been a few research pieces concerning the issue. Therefore, the current study attempts to explore this interesting market from the marketing communications perspective. Four hundred Thai senior consumers in Bangkok were face-to-face surveyed. Key consumption pattern variables studied were their product purchasing behavior, activities, interests, and opinions. The findings firstly describe demographic profiles of the sample. Next, opinions on how they purchase products/services, types of products/services they buy, and their buying patterns were elaborated. Factor analysis was then utilized to explore each of the lifestyle dimensions, composed of activity, interest, and opinion. In the end, eight lifestyle patterns of the senior consumers were discovered. They are the concerns, the moderns, the family-orienteds, the enjoyables, the conservatives, the down-to-earths, the pessimistics, and the materialistics. Research implications are also discussed.