The marketing of technology products for older people: Evidence of visual ageism

Abstract

Visual ageism is “the social practice of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way”. In this chapter, we explore the visual portrayals of older adults in advertising and marketing strategies for technological products. We use a systematic literature review on research conducted during the past ten years (2011–2021), exploring empirical studies in which visual representations of older adults were mentioned. Four scientific databases were used: Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct and ProQuest, and three sets of keywords: advertisements and technology; older people and technology advertisements, and older people and stereotypes in advertising to select the final corpus of analysis. We explore the presence of visual ageism – underrepresentation, stereotypical representations, and roles played by older adults when they are visually represented in connection with technology and also how these visual portrayals are different on different technological products. Older adults tend to be less present in advertisements regarding technology products, as compared to other domains, for example, health products. When they are visually present in technology-related advertisements and marketing strategies, older people are associated with older technological products and the mechanic ones (for example, automotive) and, to a lesser extent, associated with the new technology. Also, the findings indicated that we face stronger visual ageism in the case of older women compared to older men. The current investigation opens the discussion on further developments in exploring visual ageism in the case of technology products. The role of some contextual aspects, the importance of technology in different countries, and the technological history, as well as the different models of aging, might shape visual representations of older adults in the content of the advertisements. Equally important is to investigate older persons' perceptions of the visual content in which technology is represented in association with different age groups.