Skip to main content

The Language of Young Consumers

According to Forrester, in the US alone today there are 73 million people under the age of 18. While they sometimes resemble a completely different species -- confounding marketers, device makers, and their parents -- young people are neither scary nor intimidating. More than media pirates or rip-off artists, young consumers are technology amenable gadget gurus who embrace the Net and make themselves readily available to marketers. Tapping into the youth market can be tricky, though -- you need to reach young consumers on their terms and, more importantly, speak a dialect that they understand.

Forrester recently surveyed 5,216 young US and Canadian consumers age 12 to 21 about their technology habits and attitudes:

1. Gadgets
Young consumers love consumer electronics even more than their adult counterparts: more than two-thirds own PCs, DVD players, home stereos, game consoles, mobile phones, and handheld videogames. Portable MP3 players like Apple's iPod and browser- or camera-enabled mobile phones have caught on with the younger set, with adoption around one-quarter and growing: MP3 players rank first on young consumers' wish lists; camera-phones rank third.

2. Web-Based Entertainment
Music, movies, and gaming content score big with young consumers on the Net. Teens spend, on average, 11 hours per week surfing the Web, and 79 percent of them can be found visiting game sites like gamezone.com. More than one-third visit music sites for artists like Kanye West or The White Stripes, and almost half favor sites dedicated to films like "Napoleon Dynamite."

3. Social Marketing
Although equally as skeptical about traditional advertising as their parents, young consumers have already jumped on the social marketing bandwagon. More than half of young consumers rely on their friends and families for purchase advice, and 65 percent tell others about products they like. Marketers can reach young consumers' social marketing networks by using the electronic communication tools favored by youth: IM, mobile phones, and email.

4. Video Games
Almost all -- 94 percent -- of young consumers own some device that they use for game-playing. More than half of young consumers prefer gaming to watching TV. This affinity for all things video game, along with their love for Web-based entertainment, makes young consumers a prime audience for advergames.

5. Digital Music
Young consumers have not been mislabeled "media pirates" -- they do download MP3s and use peer-to-peer file sharing more than adults. But teens' piracy will not be the force behind the potential demise of the conventional music industry. As rates of file-sharing decline, young consumers buy more music online. iTunes and Napster To Go, legal alternatives to Gnutella and eDonkey, give young consumers an easy, inexpensive, and conscience-friendly way to fill up the MP3 players they plan to buy.

Popular posts from this blog

Global Digital Business and IT Consulting Outlook

Across the globe, CEOs and their leadership teams continue to seek information and guidance about planned Digital Transformation initiatives and the most effective enterprise organization change management practices. Worldwide IT and Business Services revenue will grow from $1.13 trillion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2023 -- that's a 5.7 percent year-over-year growth, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). The mid-term to long-term outlook for the market has also increased -- the five-year CAGR is forecast at 5.2 percent, compared to the previous 4.9 percent. Digital Sevices & Consulting Market Development IDC has raised the growth projection despite a weak economic outlook, because of vendor performances across 2022, growth indicators from adjacent markets, increased government funding, and inflation impacts. The actual 2022 market growth was 6.7 percent (in constant currency), which was 87 basis points higher than forecast last year, alth

Open Banking Usage to Grow by 470 Percent

The Open Banking business model has been advantageous for Third-Party Providers (TPPs), helping them to extend their offerings into other areas of financial services with new capabilities. Open Banking is also advantageous for traditional banking institutions, despite the perceived loss of custodianship over their data, by providing greater accessibility to more bank services. Furthermore, Open Banking can help serve Mobile Internet providers that are able to leverage it to create tailored services according to customers’ preferences and/or economic limitations. Open Banking Market Development Since traditional banking services are made more convenient by TPPs via greater data access, customers can proactively manage their finances and shape the development of new financial offerings. This is particularly noticeable in the realm of Digital Payments, where retail merchants and customers transact through eCommerce, which has the greatest number of use cases for Open Banking. These includ

Why Instant Issuance Payment Cards Evolved

The global financial services sector continues to grow as more progressive organizations seek to gain a meaningful competitive advantage from their digital transformation initiatives. Across the globe, many regions are seeing a significant rise in 'instant issuance' activity from a physical and digital perspective, from both traditional and emerging innovative banking institutions. Digital Payments Market Development Customers increasingly demand instant access to banking services, with physical instant issuance enabling them to leave their branch equipped with a ready-to-go payment card. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the market for instantly issued physical payment cards will increase from 243.2 million shipments in 2022 to a forecast of 471.1 million in 2027. "Critically, instant issuance of payment cards is no longer limited to the physical," said Sam Gazeley, industry analyst at ABI Research . Indeed, the growing digitization of p