Good things happen when grandparents reach for their wallets online

[mandy]

Older shoppers, who generally sat out the Internet's first big commercial push, are helping to feed the surging Web economy. Many of them now have a few years of Internet surfing behind them — enough to give them enough confidence to click the "buy" button. And because this group has far more disposable cash than any other, executives who have not already begun tweaking their strategies to reach them will probably do so soon, online analysts and executives say.

"This group has been kind of overlooked until now," said Heather Dougherty, an analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings, an online consultancy. "But the older boomers are far from newbies at this point. We're not talking about people who are 100 years old and haven't seen a computer."...

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/technology/12ecom.html?_r=1&ex=1150257600&en=c7a8b77e00bff7ba&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin