SAM 1990 reported a 1988 study by the Donnelley Marketing organization of Stamford, Connecticut, concerning variances between marketers’ views of seniors and seniors’ views of themselves. Because there is little reason to expect much has changed, we present the main findings of that report again in Figure potlight how far off base marketers’ views of seniors can be. Note in particular the divergence of thought about what label older people prefer, especially the differences between marketers and older people on the label "senior"—seems the latter don’t mind it as much as marketers do—and the label "50+," which marketers thought older people would like best when in fact they liked it least.
With the reprise of the Donnelley report revealing a serious incongruence between older people’s views of themselves and how marketers view them, we arrive at the closing of this chapter in which we set the goal of illuminating the importance of life satisfaction aspirations in second-half markets. My parting thought is that companies that try to understand the makeup of life satisfaction in the second half of life will turn one Madison Avenue myth into reality for themselves: They will have a portfolio of older customers who will not switch to another brand.