Marketing to the Teenage Crowd

Marketing to the Teenage Crowd

Today’s teenagers were born at the turn of the 21st century. They represent billions of dollars in buying power, but the big question for marketer is how to reach them.

These teens have grown up in the electronic age and take it for granted. They link to communicate with each other-and can do so almost constantly. One study estimates that teenagers spend more than seven hours a day using media of various kinds, mostly electronic. How do they log this astonishing amount of time? By sacrificing sleep and by multitasking. Parents often find their teens listening to music, watching TV, doing homework, playing videogames, and text messaging.

Which media to teenagers neglect or ignore? They hardly ever read newspapers Jeffery Cole, the director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, predicts that printed newspapers will eventually become extinct as social media steadily increase in power. Teens want news, he explains, but only about the narrowly focused community of their peers.

Teenagers like smart phones, especially those with apps for constant status updates, but don’t make any phone calls. Instead, they text message.

Marketers will need to learn how to reach teenagers by inviting their input, listening to them with genuine respect, adopting their suggestions, and continuing to ask for feedback. Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget conducted a survey asking teens which brand they thought did the best job of communicating with them. To his surprise, Amazon got more write-in votes than any other brand, including Facebook. He says of Amazon, “Teens can read reviews, they can submit their own and they can get recommendations based on what they link.” Stewart believes that “managing your Amazon presence is more important than building out a Facebook strategy.”

Of course, even Amazon is only one component of integrated marketing plan. Teenagers are highly suspicious of anything that even remotely resembles advertising. When shopping, they depend heavily on the opinions of their peers.

Jeffery Cole thinks that as today’s teens mature, the allure of knowing everything about their friends will fade. What will endure will be what every generation wants: they will still want to have “total control over their media” as a way of having “real control over their lives.”

ASSISGNMENT

This assignment provides you with the opportunity to synthesize and apply the concepts learned from in this course, your book, as well as outside research to analyze a real-world business case. The analytical exercises will improve your understanding and ability to think critically about target and product marketing.

You are expected to apply critical thinking skills to this case and demonstrate your understanding of the topic and how it relates to your coursework. Outside research is required. You are to use APA format including in-text citations and a reference list. (Note: Long, direct quotes are not allowed. Instead paraphrase the idea/concept you want to use and provide an in-text citation to credit the source.)

Please use section headers, but do not copy the question into your work.

Your report for discussing the case should be at least 350 spell-checked words including the following 3 sections:

1. Overview – Briefly summarize and set up the case scenario, identifying any important issues or aspects.

2. Discussion Questions –

• Discuss the consumer behavior and influences of the teen market.
• What strategies or tactics can marketers best use to reach their desired target market of teens? Appealing to them but without making them feel talked down to?
• Highlight a brand that is doing a good job of communicating with teens and explain why.

3. Debriefing – Summarize the discussion and your point of view. Incorporating what you have learned so far in the course, incorporating textbook and this Module’s readings, as well as any outside additional research to add to your discussion or support your point. This is also your opportunity to reflect and discuss your thoughts, opinions, and solutions based on the case.