• by Derek Dunham , Columnist, August 27, 2012

A 60-something man passes away unexpectedly. His friends and relatives are scattered throughout the country, and many are elderly and too frail to venture out, much less attend his memorial service. The end result: an empty room?

Try a broadcast of the memorial service streamed live on the Web for anyone to see on their home computer or mobile device.

We’re not trying to be morbid here. New attitudes, along with new options and technology, are changing the way Boomers are dealing with death care. Last year, FuneralOne.com, a producer of funeral webcasts, broadcast more than 12,000 services – a 200% increase from the year before.

As the population ages, it’s an obvious conclusion that the per capita death rate will rise in the coming decades. Currently, the United Nations’ estimate of annual deaths totals 57 million, a number that is expected to reach 80 million by 2040. As mortality becomes a more open topic of conversation, consumers are exploring everything from funeral insurance to “digital afterlife maintenance” to hyper-personal funeral services.

Boomers, in particular, not only represent a significant portion of the at-need and pre-need funeral service market, they are rewriting the rules of end-of-life planning: bidding for burial plots on eBay, designing their own headstones and caskets, and drafting their own online obituaries. The funeral industry has seen a huge shift in the planning process, according to Funeral Home & Cemetery News. Today’s Boomer consumers, who don’t necessarily want to follow tradition, are opting to do things differently, and are becoming increasingly active in planning every aspect of their service.

A growing trend is the demand for cremation services. Roughly 35% of deaths in America now result in cremations – a number that’s projected to rise. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, nearly 45% of deaths will result in cremation by 2025. Service providers should understand that while financial considerations are the most common reason for choosing cremation over burial, other reasons exist as well. Recent research shows that many believe cremation to be more environmentally friendly, or an alternative to being remembered “lying in a coffin, dressed up in someone else’s clothes.”

Many funeral homes, eager to offset the revenue lost during the recession and due to the increasing number of cost-saving cremations, are now offering a host of additional services; special options range from the expected, including “green” burial products and caskets personalized with engraving and images to the truly bizarre (themed services, taxidermy). Eternal Image, a manufacturer of brand name memorial products, has created a line of “Star Trek” and sports team-branded cremation urns, and is also responsible for the “Kiss Kasket.”

Additionally, Boomers are turning to “celebrants” to help them plan their own memorial service or that of a loved one. It’s a role that mirrors those of wedding or party planners, if you will. According to the Celebrant Foundation & Institute, which trains professional planners for all types of ceremonies, more than one-third of requests are now for custom funerals, up from virtually none just 10 years ago.

For the digital generation, there are plenty of online planning resources such as Funerals.org, FuneralDecisions.com and FuneralPriceFinder.com, to name a few. For those concerned with online privacy, streamed ceremonies are password protected.

Understanding and being guided by the mature consumer’s perspective is essential for providers of burials, cremations, headstones, funerals and other related products. Boomer consumers have learned to think about death care in a new light, and, while most are hesitant to have a conversation about purchasing products and services, they have concrete (or marble or granite) ideas about their wishes.