For all its diversity, the huge Boomer generation usually has one experience in common: the challenge of helping aging parents and loved ones stay healthy and independent. I call it a challenge because many seniors aren’t happy to think they need help, and as a result, they often turn it away, whether it comes from their family or from technology. Maybe especially from technology.
Today we have sensors, devices, and apps that can be helpful for virtually every chronic or acute condition that elders either live with or are at risk for, from Alzheimer’s to Zika. Do we see these technologies in widespread use? Do family members even know where to find them? Surely the marketing and channel development we’ve seen so far could be better, but that misses the point. Almost uniquely, senior tech is a sector where more often than not, the customers don’t want what you’re selling. The product might be perfectly fine, but it feels stigmatizing to own or use it.
A U.S. News & World Report survey looked at 2,000 older adults to learn how they’re using assistive technologies. Nearly half of them (47%) don’t use any health-related technologies at all, and of that group, the overwhelming majority (70%), said they don’t need them yet. Sound familiar? Every family caregiver that has had to frequently repeat (and repeat) what they’ve just said, or has their heart skip a beat every time a frail parent uses the stairs, knows this mindset well. We must find solutions.
The most commonly heard answer simply re-frames the problem — seniors aren’t really the customers for senior tech, their kids are. That’s all fine and good until the purchased wearable – or worse, the mPERS – ends up uncharged and in a drawer within days or weeks. You can’t force compliance; if you could, health professionals would be very happy campers.
In my view, one necessary solution is a greater focus on the product’s appeal, rather than its benefits. These are not the same thing. Benefits should be thought of as a given; without them there’s no reason for the product. Appeal is different; it’s why people prefer one product over another, even when the benefits are more or less the same. Nobody wants to need hearing aids or incontinence supplies. But many seniors do need them, and according to most research, they’re extremely brand loyal.
Obviously, need is a great purchase driver, but for this market, want may be worth even more. Two recent data points provide great examples of why. In the first, a landmark clinical study demonstrated that hearing aids can dramatically slow cognitive decline in high-risk (read: older) populations, a premise that most gerontologists had already long accepted. In the second, EssilorLuxottica, the world’s foremost eyewear company, launched the first hearables that are integrated into eyeglasses.
Nobody wants to live with cognitive decline and this condition can’t be cured. But in OTC hearing aids, there’s now an easy and affordable technology that has proven itself effective in slowing the onset by a whopping 48%. Now imagine trying to convince an elderly parent to buy hearing aids for just this reason. Some will be rational and grateful. Others will bristle that they hear just fine (if you’d only speak more clearly) and their cognition is completely intact and how dare you suggest otherwise? Some caretakers will continue to fight the good fight. Many others will give up.
On the other hand, 93% of people between the ages of 65 and 75 wear corrective lenses, and if hearing aids were invisible inside their glasses, there’d be much less objection. According to Luxottica, their invisible technology removes “a psychological barrier that has historically stood in the way of consumer adoption of traditional hearing aids.” Their “hearable glasses” are now available under the corporation’s Nuance brand, starting at $1200 just for the frames (no lenses).
Top-rank OTC hearing aids in a traditional form factor cost less than half of that. Because they’re in-ear. they’re able to do a better job of what hearing aids are supposed to do.
But even though they’re cheaper and better than hearable glasses, which one do you think will be easier to talk mom or dad into buying?
# # #
Senior Partner Lew Brown oversees bluesalve partners’ health tech practice. Lew has deep expertise in consumer IoT, consumer technologies and consumer goods, and excels in bringing new products and technologies to market.
