About my thesis

Contemporary senior consumers are often described as financially strong and with a willingness to consume. Combined with spare time they become an utterly attractive consumer group. In spite of that, marketing to the older consumer has been off the track, as old age has meant thriftiness, decline and withdrawal. At the moment a change is to be seen. Age can be commodified in order to sell more to the older consumers who are eagerly waiting to be noticed and to blow their money. In this commodifying process, marketers as well as society in general offer different ways of interpreting and giving meaning to age when talking about or visualizing the older consumer. By this representation they at the same time create boundaries for how older age and aging will be and can be interpreted. These boundaries construct age identities. The thesis contributes to consumer culture theory where marketing is seen as a discursive practice with an ideological character. By using discourse analytical concepts in combination with a cultural approach to consumption the thesis provides tools for grasping commodifying identityshaping processes where marketers are involved.

There is something in Swedish also behind this link: http://www.hanken.fi/staff/suokannas/