Chapter 2: What are the Baby Boomer Trends in the health and fitness market?

Unparalleled Economic Demand

At the turn of the 21st century, there are approximately 78 million baby boomers in the U.S. alone. They will fall into their peak earning years. Their age would be roughly 37 to 55 years old. This will be the age where they have made it big in life, bought everything they needed and are focusing their expenses on the next big thing.

People who positioned themselves well in the market during the 80’s are living off their wealth earned for the rest of their lives. They became millionaires during that phase. Especially at that time, a million dollars would be huge money.

People who positioned themselves well during the 90’s are billionaires today! They are the people who cashed in on PCs and the Internet Revolution. Those baby boomers needed new gadgets, cars and toys to play with.

The baby boomers have also spent massive amounts of money and are willing to spend even more in the future.

Statistics shown that baby boomers make up about 5 trillion dollars of a 10 trillion dollar U.S. economy. The 78 million baby boomers in U.S. alone only make up about 30% of the U.S. population and but amount up to 50% of the gross national product.

The rest of the population of the world however has more than ONE BILLION baby boomers. What do you think one billion rich, restless baby boomers would want to spend their money on next?

Just take a look around you.

Newspapers, television, radios are advertising products day after day. The advertisers are very clear of the spending power of these people and through these sources you will be able to predict.

Boomers Start and Destroy Markets

Most people who want to profit big from selling anything must focus on an expanding, growing market.

When the boomers were born, there was a huge demand for baby food, baby powder, cribs and a lot of other books on parenting. Companies that were positioned well at that time grew rich. Companies like Gerber, sold two billion jars of baby food by the year 1955!

When the boomers we growing up, Mattel made a fortune selling Barbie dolls! The trend was so strong that children (girls) were grouped into those that played with Barbie dolls and those that didn’t!

How about the Ford Mustang? Remember that time?

During the 1970’s, it was the biggest real estate boom of all time. Why? Because one billion baby boomers were looking for a home to stay in. Home developers were cashing in. But they didn’t anticipate a big problem 15 years later.

When enough houses were built and the boomers didn’t need anymore houses, the industry started to slow down and developers everywhere were losing money and going bankrupt. The developers didn’t realize that the number of home buyers was staring to dry up.

Eventually, the extra houses caused a surplus in the economy. And that caused the demand to go down. The entire real estate industry was starting to go down the drain because houses that were priced at the ‘normal’ rate to cover the cost of building it, suddenly plummeted and they couldn’t recuperate their loss.

This important thing to consider. Historically, markets that disappeared from the face of the earth can be estimated from the shrinking demand. People had to work twice as hard to earn the same amount of pay.

Therefore, it would be suicidal to market something to baby boomers when they have outgrown the age where the demand would be there.

Change is inevitable. If you are not growing and remain stagnant, then chances are you are either shrinking or atrophying because everyone is moving one step ahead and you appear relatively behind everyone else.

Keeping up with the Boomer’s Trends

If I were to position myself as a market leader, what products or services would I focus on? Remember the microwave?

Why was the microwave such a hit? Simple cooking and reheating. Baby boomers don’t have time to cook at home. Most of them were double income couples with or without any kids.

The VCR was also very popular because busy people worked 8-12 hours a day and couldn’t stay at home to watch their favorite shows. Those shows that were showing on their working time or when they are doing over time, can be viewed when they get home. The VCR was an ingenious invention.

Today however, it would be suicidal to focus 100 percent on VCRs due to the fact that most media are recorded on digital format (CDs, DVDs and computers)

Remember a time when organs were a popular musical instruments? Now the trend is shifting towards electronic keyboards. Pianos still remained popular because the trend is evergreen.

Since we are not focusing on evergreen markets, we would have to follow trends that come and go.

Furthermore, the boomers are well educated and (compared to the past) more impatient people. They want everything instant, fast and NOW (especially with the power of the Internet). They get bored easily are not willing to stick to the same thing long enough.

If you don’t have a new exciting product that will grab their attention within the first 4 seconds of contact, you have just lost a customer.

In the next chapter, we will go more in depth and focus on what are their needs in the present and on what products we can sell to the boomers.

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