The Silver Market Phenomenon
August 23rd, 2008
If you’re in the Tokyo area the first week of October, consider attending The Silver Market Phenomenon symposium, which will look at the challenges posed to business and societies by the global age wave. The symposium is tied to the publication of a book of the same name, which will be published in early September by Springer. The book is edited by Florian Kohlbacher of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo and Cornelius Herstatt of the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, in Hamburg.
The book examines at the growing 55-plus population globally, and considers why the market is still underdeveloped from a product a service standpoint. I contributed a chapter–which I’ll be presenting at the symposium–titled “The End of Mass Media: Aging and the U.S. Newspaper Industry.” The struggles of the newspaper business is one of my favorite topics, due mainly to my long, sorry history as an ink-stained wretch. The essay traces the importance of Boomers in mass media in the U.S., and how the newspaper industry has failed to grasp this audience’s ongoing importance as publishers struggle to make the transition to new digital platforms.
Other contributors you probably know include Chuck Nyren on the role of advertising agencies in marketing to boomers and Dick Stroud on the importance of Web 2.0 to Boomers.
If you’d like to learn more about the symposium, download the flier here [pdf file].
