Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Special report
Agents of change: how
young consumers are
changing the world of
marketing
Ian Spero and
Merlin Stone
The authors
Ian Spero is Founder and Managing Director of Spero
Communications Ltd, London, UK. E-mail: is@sperocom.co.uk
Web: www.sperocom.co.uk
Merlin Stone is IBM Professor of Relationship Marketing at
Bristol Business School (UWE), Business Research Leader with
IBM UK Ltd, and Director, The Database Group Ltd., QCi Ltd., and
The Halo Works Ltd. E-mail: merlin_stone@uk.ibm.com
Keywords
Information society, Young adults, Customers, Marketing
Abstract
This paper looks at young adults relationship with digital media.
From a commercial perspective the opportunity to deploy these
channels to promote consumer recruitment and loyalty is very
significant indeed. However, consumer marketing companies will
have to learn to meet the needs of this very discerning and highly
cynical audience by combining the best creative ideas and
strategies with a transformed approach to marketing sales and
service, embodying the best of information and communications
technology, reliably and securely implemented. Communication
networks underpin this report. While teens complain that they
have less public space to hang out in, they are making the online
world their milieu, their domain where they develop personal
relationships and where they play and learn new things. The
conclusions cover not only the effect of current market drivers,
but also emerging trends that will allow brands to better
understand the behaviour of young adults, so as to establish
more truthful binds with them.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-2752.htm
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
Lifestyle traits
By using the lifestyle traits young people inhabit,
marketers can paint individual and accurate
pictures of who these young people are.
Young people must be emotionally engaged. A
brand will not succeed unless young people
connect with the brand emotionally, allowing them
to trust it. Unless brands allow young people to feel
independent, empowered and free of moral
judgments they will fail to sell to them. A brand
with an emotional difference can potentially
command a premium. To develop an emotional
connection, a brand must allow young people to
interact with it. This is where digital channels
come to the fore. They allow interaction with an
immediacy and vividness that no other channel can
offer. Digital channels are not only a leading
method of interaction. They are also very popular
with young people. One in four young people aged
7 to 16 is estimated to have replaced the television
with the Internet. The digital environment is
where young people feel they can be themselves.
An emotional difference
A brand with an emotional difference can
potentially command a premium.
Young people are increasingly using and
adapting what were the tools of the adult world
(computers, Internet, mobile phones) not only to
interact with their own worlds, but to create and
structure their worlds. While gaming represents
the most extreme example of a tool (computing)
being taken over, the same phenomenon is
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
The 30-second ad
The 30-second ad on the TV no longer satisfies a
youth sector.
Teenagers multi-task online and are learning to
manage information overload. The 30-second ad
on the TV no longer satisfies a youth sector used to
accumulating and processing data streams.
Leading brands such as Coca-Cola are pulling out
of conventional ads, opting for splintered
advertising across sponsorship, SMS, Internet and
music downloads. The speed at which teenagers
switch from one product to the next will dictate
how online retailers grasp their imagination and
attention. Online retailers need to think about
whether their products will convince consumers
that a switch or upgrade is worthwhile. Unless
companies take heed, teenagers will freely choose
between staying with an existing product,
upgrading with an existing manufacturer, or
migrating to a competitor and they will do this
before existing suppliers can react.
New technologies
New technologies are picked up quickly, provided
that they observe the basic rules of economy,
adaptability, technical pervasiveness, and market
pervasiveness.
Pre-packaged solutions and singular marketing
strategies do not attract teenagers. Traditional
forms of media are incompatible with teenage
behaviours such as online multi-tasking and
managing vast amounts of information.
Commercial TV viewing has seen a 36 per cent
drop, music and magazine sales have slumped over
the last two years, aided and abetted by music
piracy and income being spent on mobile phone
top-up cards. Key forces that drive these changes
are listed here.
Forces
The future of online retailing
The future of online retailing will depend on
payment methods being easy and accessible to
teenagers.
The hype and excitement surrounding
purchasing and using technology has died and a
new attitude of practical realism prevails. Mobile
phones, PDAs, PCs and digital TVs are
increasingly seen as tools to help people get the
most out of day-to-day living. Interactive
technologies are not the playthings of the
specialists. Online retailers should take note of the
current acceptance and expectation teenagers have
towards new technologies. They know it is
everywhere, available in everyday locations.
They should also bear in mind that teenagers are
not excited about technology in the same way
adults are. Teenagers have surpassed the
overwhelming wow factor surrounding
technology.
Attention economy
The always on economy is dictated by a new
understanding held by virtually all young people.
They know that technology is omnipresent, which
in turn instills a sense of omniscience. This new
found mindset means teenagers expect and
demand access to technology and information all
the time, from anywhere, and in whatever format
suits their lifestyle. Broadband use in UK
households has risen by 60 per cent over the last six
months, meaning that teenagers are online, for
longer. The omnipresence of virtual space has
meant that teenagers can participate in and switch
off from communities. Creating characters on chat
sites gives them the choice of getting in and out of
roles being visible and invisible to community
members at will. Blogging (logging online
diaries) creates an always on, always out there,
public personae. Online retailers must make their
services ubiquitous in young peoples lives and
seamless engagement with teenagers is the key.
Seamless engagement with teenagers
Online retailers must make their services
ubiquitous in young peoples lives seamless
engagement with teenagers is key.
A total of 89 per cent of UK teenagers have
never made a purchase online, but 29 per cent
research products on the Internet before buying
them at stores according to a market consultancy,
Jupiter Media Matrix Research in September
2001. Limited payment methods have traditionally
hindered teen spending online, although 79 per
cent say that they would shop online and have at
their disposal an income that rises faster than
inflation. From 5 per month two years ago, the
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
Face to face
Despite the potential of global communication,
teenagers prefer to communicate with local online
communities with a localised language (netspeak: a
hybrid language of the written and spoken word).
This parallels attitudes in the real world, although
teenagers complain that public spaces are
increasingly no-go zones and youth clubs have
faced cutbacks. Evidence suggests that no
technology or application has taken the place of
face-to-face communication. Online retailers need
to consider to what extent they integrate and use
human interfaces, contact and branding within
their proposition. Customers of all ages want
mobility and flexibility through the use of
technology they also want a brand and service
that has a human side to its offering.
Community rules
Between the ages of 12-16, peer group and
individual identity are in development. Peer group
relationships provide the framework through
which teenagers develop self-sufficiency and
independence. Teenagers want to be seen as highly
autonomous individuals, so hijacking cultures and
Culturepreneurs
Applications and effective interactive
strategies
Applications and effective interactive strategies
enable teenagers to shape, modify and spread
information.
Teenagers internally define a product or
application, determining its usage and patterns.
Many see this as fashion-led, precarious and
volatile as teenagers have voracious though shortlived appetites for the new. The truth of the matter
is that teenagers push the boundaries of a product
they play with it to the extent where they
highlight the limits of what a product can achieve.
Interactivity of Internet sites for teenagers is far
more advanced in terms of functionality and
accessibility than those designed for adults. This is
because they are developed by and for a generation
that intuitively moves beyond complicated
functionality they use it and tell it how it is.
Smart marketers bring teenagers into the early
stages of a products development and enable the
teen to do the developing.
The early stages of a products development
Smart marketers bring teenagers into the early
stages of a products development and enable the
teen to do the developing.
A total of 70 per cent of UK teenagers said
theyd choose texting over voice messaging, one in
five 13-16 year-olds use phones only for text
messaging. Distinctions between adult and child,
amateur and professional are in the process of
falling apart. Teenagers are becoming the new
authority when it comes to technological knowhow
and applications. The mobile generation, who are
used to mobile communications, omnipresent
Internet access and immediate communication
means, are leaping ahead of older generations.
Despite an ageing population also taking the
Internet by storm, teenagers will push and adapt to
technology far quicker and easier than their older
counterparts. Teenagers today are going to extend
the boundaries of the Internet, mobile technology
and the human-computer relationship. Their level
of technological smartness is symbolised by their
entrepreneurship, imagination and creativity.
They know a hell of a lot more than most adults
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
Virtual living
Evolving communities
There are multiple possibilities to participate in
online communities with specialist interests. Key is
peer acceptance and the ability to share interests,
through news groups, chat sites and gaming.
Multi-user games played across the mobile and
MMORPGs are community rich environments in
which team playing underpins the game
experience. The Web is perceived by many
teenagers as virtual and therefore a remote
experience supplying distant interaction with
communities. With the increased use of pervasive
games cross media, communication access from
the Web and the mobile will converge. Peer group
pressure is a key driving force in building and
maintaining communities. Viral Marketing relies
on word of mouth in the virtual and real world to
spread a message and recommend a product. VM
can also be introduced through real characters
on chat sites, or downloadable cult quick-time
movies.
Text
Teenagers love to text. SMS has reached saturation
point in the UK, though it shows no signs of
diminishing. Private messaging and the relatively
cheap cost compared with a mobile phone call
have meant that text messaging is an extremely
user-friendly medium. Texting is not primarily
used as a location informer, nor is it exclusively
used remotely. Teenagers text in the classroom, on
Chat
The most visited teen sites on the Internet are chat
sites. Chat sites such as U-boot use a hyperpersonal language: Netspeak. It isnt a revolution,
nor will it kill language as is popularly believed
gossip and slang, the craze of speaking backwards
are old performance rituals. The chat room
provides a domain in which written language is
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
Changing environments
Desk-top ICT
Desk-top ICT (information and communication
technology) integration within UK schools is
growing rapidly.
As space within the real world becomes
constrained and controlled by private and
institutional interests, the bedroom is increasingly
an evolutionary microworld for the teen The messy
out-of bounds bedroom may be just as messy, but
it is evolving into a fully kitted infotainment zone
with multi-channel TV, PCs, CD burners, iPods
and Internet access. This allows most teenagers to
surf, channel hop, text and e-mail from the
comfort of their bed. It is common knowledge that
teenagers rule the roost when it comes to
understanding and adapting quickly to new
technologies. Hence, when the teenagers of today
become the adults of tomorrow, the ubiquitous
technology they have grown up with, will spill over
and populate the home. Adults of tomorrow will
push the boundaries of technology usage.
They will have the confidence, the necessity and
skill to assimilate mundane tasks with high-tech
gadgetry. Online retailers should harness how
teenagers integrate convergent technologies, and
target the bedroom as an exemplary case of how
best to channel multi medium entertainment.
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Agents of change: how young consumers are changing the world of marketing
Future impact
Turning content into revenue
The possibilities of turning content into revenue
will become a reality.
The information highway, as well as fluid
communication networks, will become ever more
sophisticated and charge tariffs applied according
to the perceived value of information. Public and
private forms of content will be intertwined;
privacy will be a commodity to be bought and sold.
Targeted solutions and value-added benefits
Applications that provide targeted solutions and
value-added benefits will increase.
With saturation of hand-held phones and slow
uptake of new MMS phones, funky applications
that provide targeted solutions and value-added
benefits to the teen market (such as Java
programming on mobile phones for gaming), will
increase. Online retailers can apply this trend as
applications, data and content will prevail beyond
hardware.
Reading multimedia memory
Ways of reading multimedia memory will
transform the way that the past and present is
experienced.
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