|
Turning Silver into Goldby Mary S. Furlong (Wharton School Pub, 0 Pages) Seasoned digital-marketing strategist Furlong explores the breadth and depth of the baby-boomer market. Boomers make up 25% of the population, own 77% of the country's financial assets and are looking at greater discretionary income as they go about retiring the word "retire." They are now marching well into middle age and their marketplace desires are morphing, explains Furlong in this broad and thoughtful book. The author sees them as representing hundreds of market segments: Boomers have concerns and interests including health, investing, entertainment and travel, sexuality, entrepreneurship and technology, religion and spirituality and a vast array of philanthropic and social commitments. The title's silver may mean hair color, but the gold represents wisdom as well as wealth, "and how they will transform their financial worth into good works." Still, Furlong has profit-oriented business advice to tender, giving dozens of examples of how the boomers' interests can be met, particularly by Internet-savvy businesspeople, from software that helps sharpen memory to dealing with loneliness to safe sex to civic engagement. |