The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

Finding the Automotive Sweet Spot

Consider the automobile market. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler have been selling record numbers of cars—especially the very profitable sport-utility vehicles (i.e., trucks with nice upholstery)—to the Baby Boomers. However, the bloom is off the rose because Boomers are aging out of their peak car-buying years at the rate of one every eight seconds.

Detroit’s car-buying sweet spot is a bell-shaped curve representing customers between thirty-five and forty-five years old; it peaks in the early forties. Boomers are now age forty-four to sixty-three. I am imagining the dialog in a boardroom at Ford: “Our customer has naturally aged out of our market. Does anyone see a problem here? No? Good. Well, let’s build ...