Consumer marketing trends are changing the retail landscape with altered perceptions about age, lifestyle and values.

Like many fashion retailers, Gap aggressively chased Gen X and Y dollars this past spring, jamming its stores with prairie skirts, see-through tops and hippie shirts. But a dramatic and change in consumer marketing trends caught the clothier unaware.

The chain’s so-called “in” garments left customers feeling on the outs. As sales plummeted, Gap refocused on clothes with universal appeal. It even issued a mea culpa to miffed customers through a huge TV advertising campaign that trumpeted attire “for every generation.”

So what happened? Had Gap missed a cosmic shift in consumer marketing trends?

Time was when advertisers and product managers were supposed to focus on the young consumers who had not locked into one brand. After all, they drove the market.

Not anymore. Gone are the days when age proved to be the key demographic, when people followed a linear path from school to marriage to children to retirement.

The new paradigm in consumer marketing trends proves that no longer do people fit into neat cubbyholes or respond to the same hot buttons as their peers.

Now, many return to school at age 30, start families in their 40s and launch careers in their 50s. A wedding chapel might hold a ceremony for a 20-year-old bride in the morning and a 50-year-old bride in the afternoon.

“In many ways, a 50-year-old bride has more in common with a 20-year-old bride than with a 50-year-old woman who has been married to the same man for 20 years,” says Maddy Dychtwald, author of Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy.

In the old linear model, a marketer could be fairly certain of the type of life someone was leading at age 20 or 40 or 60. But as Gap found out, consumer marketing trends aren’t governed by their prospective customers’ birth certificates but by their lifestyles or “lifecycles.”

Experts say companies that recognize this revolution in consumer marketing trends must eschew the stereotypes of age-based marketing to gain a distinct competitive advantage. Long Bay Beach Resort & Villas in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, for example, is a popular resort that offers a “Family Escape Package” complete with a two-bedroom villa — one room for a newly married couple and the other for their kids.

Consumer marketing trends reflect demographic shift

By 2010, the number of adults age 40 and older will grow from 123 million to 138 million, and younger age groups will grow from 84.7 million to only 86.9 million. The implications of this demographic shift go far beyond its effect on the pool of customers.

“When middle-aged people become the majority, that changes the values of all ages,” says David B. Wolfe, a marketing consultant and coauthor of Ageless Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the Hearts & Minds of the New Customer Majority.

The median age of adults in the United States is 44, an age around which people normally become more introspective, spiritually minded and less influenced by their peers.

A company that has successfully exploited this new mindset is Boston-based New Balance. The athletic shoe company’s marketing appeals to the centered, secure perspective of middle age, epitomized by its lack of celebrity spokespeople. (New Balance’s official policy is Endorsed By No One.)

“We’ve found that our core consumers respond well to our [Endorsed By No One] philosophy,” says New Balance’s Paul Heffernan, executive vice president for global marketing, design and development.

“Since they are a bit older, they typically don’t buy products because of celebrity/athlete endorsements but because they are looking for the best products that fit well and offer high-performance benefits.”

It’s not surprising that New Balance has a solid market share in the middle-age and older market for athletic shoes. It is also the fastest growing company in youth market sales because the values of the psychological center of gravity (those 40-somethings) ripple through the other age groups by osmosis.

“Too many marketers are projecting the values of youth even though youth no longer define the rules of marketplace engagement,” Wolfe points out.

Focus on Innovation

Since lifecycle customers represent a moving target, companies must be nimble in their pursuit of them.

“When lifecycles are no longer defined exclusively by age, companies will only be as good as their current ability to keep pace with a constantly morphing consumer,” Dychtwald says.

Dollars spent several years ago to understand customers’ wants, needs and habits may no longer be relevant. In a cyclic society, one market study per product isn’t enough.

Dychtwald cites the fat-free snacks that product development teams came up with in response to overwhelming consumer demand. They now sit on store shelves because consumers are eating low-carb foods.

To reach lifecycle customers, companies will have to work harder and be more innovative. Look at Harcum College. In the past, the small private college in the suburbs of Philadelphia recruited primarily at high schools.

But today, 47 percent of Harcum’s student body is over the age of 24. This older age group isn’t easy to reach. So, the college recently participated in a women’s health fair at a local mall.

The target wasn’t the women who stopped by for information on mammograms and fitness programs but mall workers — people in their 20s through 40s who might want to further their education in hopes of one day changing their careers.

“We’re doing more transitional marketing, such as at bus stops to catch people in the community on their way to work,” says Pamela Heffner, assistant director of admissions for external relations at Harcum.

In this new era, Dychtwald believes the keys to success are flexibility, adaptability, creativity and a willingness to discard outdated, but comfortable, ideas.

“People think it’s cute when an 80-year-old man gets married,” she says. “It’s not cute. These people are falling in love. We have all these ideas in our mind about what is appropriate for a certain age. But those ages no longer represent what we have in our mind. Once we grasp that, the rest falls into place.”

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