Senior Citizens and Technology

I have written in the past about people being tech challenged and how that can impact marketing research. As the industry keeps using technology to develop new ways of data collection, are we leaving some consumer segments behind? I am particularly concerned about senior citizens. While they typically are not the darling of most marketing managers, they are a growing segment of the population. In just the past few weeks, I encountered two instances where senior citizens were stumbling with technology.

Recently, I had the opportunity to fly on Virgin America (an experience much better than most domestic carriers and worthy of a future blog posting!). Virgin America has interactive displays at every seat. You can listen to music, watch TV or movies, or even chat with fellow passengers. This is also how you order food and beverages. You pull up a menu, select what you want, swipe your credit card, and within minutes your order is delivered to your seat. An elderly women sitting next to me was trying to get something to eat. When she finally flagged down a flight attendant, they just waved her off and told her to use the interactive display. It was clear that the women could easily go hungry for the next 5 hours. I offered to help her place her order. In doing this, I realized her biggest stumbling block was touching the screen. When I was younger, we were taught to always use the controls and never to touch the screen. This applied to TVs, computers and anything else with a screen. This woman never got the memo that it is now acceptable to touch the screen. Later on, she wanted to listen to music. This again required touching the screen. She just couldn’t gasp that concept. I had to select her music for her.

Then this weekend, when leaving the San Francisco Farmer’s Market, I noticed an elderly man having trouble using the “pay ticket” machine at the parking garage. Yes, in San Francisco, we even have to pay to park to go to a farmer’s market. When I offered to help him, I discovered he had inserted his credit card and paid for his parking multiple times. I’m not sure what he was expecting, but he didn’t understand that getting back his original parking stub, which denoted it was paid, was all that he needed. He didn’t see how that would ever open the gate for him at the exit.

I suspect that both of these individuals would also be challenged by some of our newer survey tools and methodologies. If senior citizens are a critical part of your market, you may want to consider an old fashioned approach to research. One where there is human interaction.