The effect of the pace of presentation on the learning of marketing information by elderly consumers

Abstract

As the number of people in the United States over 65 years of age increases, the unique aspects of this segment become more important for marketers to understand. This study investigated how the pace at which information was presented to the elderly influenced their ability to learn marketing information. The learning task involved recalling or recognizing brand, product, and commercial information from three advertisements. The advertisements were mechanically manipulated through time compression or expansion to expose a subject to the three commercials at different paces. However, the total time which a person was exposed to an advertisement was held constant by varying the repetitions of the commercial. The learning task was made as realistic as possible by placing the test advertisements in an hour-long television program which was viewed by groups of subjects. Analysis of the resulting recall and recognition data found that elderly consumers remember less information than younger subjects. However, the pace of presentation did not appear to have any influence on recall or recognition learning for the elderly. Thus, the total time hypothesis was not rejected for older subjects. Some support was also found for the applicability of the total time hypothesis for younger subjects. Implications for researchers and practitioners were then discussed.