Impact of age on brand awareness sets: a turning point in consumers’ early 60s

Age impacts the brands a consumer knows, i.e., the “awareness set” which critically determines brand consideration and choice. Brands are in between common nouns and proper names but previous psychology research offers contradictory results on the impact of age on knowledge of common nouns versus proper names. Our empirical study on radio stations shows that the direct effect of age on awareness sets is marked by a turning point in consumers’ early 60s, with two contrasted patterns. For long-established brands, age has a direct positive impact up to the turning point but no significant direct impact afterward. For recent brands, there is no direct impact of age before that point but a strongly negative direct impact afterward. Age has also indirect effects through several mediators. Lien vers l'article

LAMBERT-PANDRAUD, R., LAURENT, G., MULLET, E. and YOON, C. (2017). Impact of age on brand awareness sets: a turning point in consumers’ early 60s. Marketing Letters, 28(2), pp. 205-218.