Abstract:

The nature & implications of mass marketing targeted at the senior population are discussed in an analysis of brochures for winter holidays for an exclusively elderly clientele. Although traditional consumer culture associated youth with strength, independence, & sexiness while declaring the need to prevent aging at all costs, recent increases in life expectancies & the elderly population have inspired a more age-sensitive form of marketing. Beyond mere sales strategies, it is argued that the tourist brochures targeted at the elderly perform a variety of sociocultural functions: (1) legitimation of an age-based social category, (2) creation of new forms & meanings of leisure for the elderly, & (3) creation of new spaces & opportunities for identity formation & adaptation to elderly life. From the perspective of the tourist industry, a growth in elderly clientele facilitates institutionalization of new tourist traditions & behaviors by the group historically responsible for the maintenance of tradition: the elderly. It is concluded that advertising represents a fluid & potentially liberating forum for identity negotiation & transformation among the elderly.