Abstract
Demographic change will pose distinct challenges for companies. The ratio of people over 65 years of age will rise in all triad countries. At the same time, the number of younger people, and thus recruits in all education levels, will drastically decline in Japan and Germany. In the USA, a shortage of highly skilled and educated workers is expected. The employment rate of aged people will therefore rise. Companies can react on many different levels. On the one hand, they can make it a business opportunity by develo** and selling products and services that support older people. On the other hand, companies will have to cope with fewer younger workers. We discuss several ways to do this: (i) to prevent loss of skills from retirement, (ii) to accommodate older workers, and (iii) to survive with fewer workers. These could lead to B2B products and services that can help companies to solve the issues involved. We look at these possibilities in turn and find that they each lead to ideas that have one or more of the following properties: (i) they are actually B2C products, (ii) they are management or organizational solutions or services, or (iii) their benefits are not specific to older workers but benefit all employees. Thus, we are led to the conclusion that the technical products best suited for the B2Industry silver market will not be “silver-specific” products, but products “designed for all” with an emphasis on usability and problem solving.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
P.B. Baltes, U. Lindenberger, U.M. Staudinger, Die zwei Gesichter der Intelligenz im Alter. Spektrum der Wissenschaft 10, 52-61 (1995)
P.T. Beatty, M. Visser (eds.), Thriving on an aging workforce: strategies for organizational and systemic change (Krieger, Melbourne, FL, 2005)
Commission of the European Communities, Confronting demographic change: a new soli- darity between the generations, Green Paper COM(2005) 94 (CEC, Brussels, 2005) http://ec.europa.eu/employment social/news/2005/mar/comm2005-94 en.pdf. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
F.I.M. Craik, Age-related changes in human memory, in Cognitive aging: a primer ed. by D. Park, N. Schwarz, (Hove Psychology, Hove, 2000), pp. 75-92
D.W. DeLong, Lost knowledge: confronting the threat of an aging workforce (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004)
A. Dickinson, R. Eisma, P. Gregor, Challenging interfaces/redesigning users, in Proceedings of the 2003 conference on universal usability, Vancouver, 10-11 Nov 2003 (ACM, New York, 2003), pp. 61-68
Federal Statistical Office, Germany’s population by 2050. Results of the 11th coordinated population projection (Statistisches Bundesamt, Weisbaden, 2006) http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/Content/Publikationen/SpecializedPublications/ Population/GermanyPopulation2050. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
J. Fuchs, D. S öhnlein, Voraussch ätzung der Erwerbsbev ölkerung bis 2050, IAB project no. 16/2005, (Institut f ür Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, N ürnberg, 2005) http://doku.iab.de/forschungsbericht/2005/fb1605.pdf. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
Japanese Ministry of Education, Basic school survey (MEXT, Tokyo, 2007) http://www.mext.go.jp/b menu/toukei/001/003/csv/tk1102.csv. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
Japanese Statistics Bureau, Annual report on the labour force survey (Ministry of Internal affairs and Communications, Tokyo, 2005)
JARA (Japan Robot Association), 2007 Mass-retirement (I) and (II), ROBOT 2007/03 p. 1 ff, 2007/05 p. 1 ff
F. Kohlbacher, Knowledge retention and HRM: insights from the “year 2007 problem” in Japan, Paper presented at the Association of Japanese Business Studies (AJBS) conference, Indianapolis, June 2007
A. Kuebler, P. Mertens, S. Russell, R. Tevis, Enterprises face the aging demographic - some options to overcome demographic challenges in a multinational company, Int. J. Hum. Resour. Man. Dev. (2008) (in press)
M. Leibold, S.C. Voelpel, Managing the aging workforce: challenges and solutions (Wiley, New York, 2007)
M. Martin, M. Kliegel, Psychologische Grundlagen der Gerontologie (Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 2005)
C. Reynolds, S.J. Czaja, J. Sharit, Age and perceptions of usability on telephone menu sys- tems, in Proceedings of the of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th annual meeting, Baltimore, 30 Sept-4 Oct 2002 (HFES, Santa Monica, 2002) pp. 175-179
W.A. Rogers, Attention and aging, in Cognitive aging: a primer ed. by D.C. Park, N. Schwarz, (Hove Psychology, Hove, 2000), pp. 57-73
F. Schieber, Human factors and aging: identifying and compensating for age-related deficits in sensory and cognitive function, in Impact of technology on successful aging ed. by K.W. Schaie, N. Charness ( Springer, New York, 2003), pp. 5-99
Tenessee Valley Authority, Knowledge retention: preventing knowledge from walking out the door (TVA, Knoxville, 2006) http://www.tva.gov/knowledgeretention/pdf/overview.pdf. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
United Nations Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Expert Group meeting on social and economic implications of changing population age structure, Mexico City, 31 Aug-2 Sept 2005, (UN Population Division, New York, 2005) http://www.un.org/esa/population/meetings/EGMPopAge/EGMPopAge.htm. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
H. Wan, M. Sengupta, V.A. Velkoff, K.A. DeBarros,, US Census Bureau Current Popula- tion Report, P23-209: 65+ in the United States: 2005 (US Government Printing Office, Washington, 2006) http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p23-209.pdf. Accessed 16 Jun 2008
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mertens, P., Russell, S., Steinke, I. (2008). Silver Markets and Business Customers: Opportunities for Industrial Markets?. In: Kohlbacher, F., Herstatt, C. (eds) The Silver Market Phenomenon. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75331-5_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75331-5_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75330-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75331-5
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)