Of old witches, pigeonholes and online magic! An empirical update of the female silver surfer

The purpose of this study is to investigate the rapidly growing and underresearched e-marketing segment of elderly female online consumers. Specifically, it is examined whether such ‘silver surfers’ differ in central... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this study is to investigate the rapidly growing and underresearched e-marketing segment of elderly female online consumers. Specifically, it is examined whether such ‘silver surfers’ differ in central personality traits, their complaint behaviour when dissatisfied and the way they seek and exercise interpersonal influence. Based on a large-scale online survey (n=2,219), the results of an ANOVA reveal that silver surfers differ significantly across seven age-segments (51-55, 56-60, 61-65, 66-70, 71-75, 76-80, 80+). Consequently, this study shows that silver surfers cannot be stereotyped into a single 50+ segment as commonly done by both researchers and practitioners.