Marketing To Youth

What is meant by youth culture:

As per youth culture can be defined as young adults (a generational unit) considered as a cultural class or subculture. Today this can be said of those who belong to Generation Y. According to Cui, Trent, Sullivan and Matiru (2003), Gen Y, children born to baby-boomers, is widely considered to be the next big generation. Businesses are therefore struggling to find ways to capture a piece of this market. So in practice, generation Y is generally defined as the 71 million individuals born between 1977 and 1994 (Nayyar, 2001; Paul, 2001). While currently somewhat smaller than its predecessor generation, the baby-boomers (estimated at 78 million), Generation Y is the emerging generation with powerful aggregate spending.

Defining �youth market’ through segmentation variables:

Market segmentation is the process that companies use to divide large heterogeneous markets into small markets that can be reached more efficiently and effectively with products and services that match their unique needs.

The key task of a marketer prior to the segmentation process is to find the variable, or variables that split the market into actionable segments

There are two types of segmentation variables:

(1) Needs

(2) Profilers

The basic criteria for segmenting a market are customer needs. To find the needs of customers in a market, it is necessary to undertake market research.

Profilers are the descriptive, measurable customer characteristics (such as location, age, nationality, gender, income) that can be used to inform a segmentation exercise.

The most common profilers used in customer segmentation include the following:

Geographic

• Region of the country

• Urban or rural

Demographic

• Age, sex, family size

• Income, occupation, education

• Religion, race, nationality

Psychographic

• Social class

• Lifestyle type

• Personality type

Behavioural

• Product usage - e.g. light, medium ,heavy users

• Brand loyalty: none, medium, high

• Type of user (e.g. with meals, special occasions)

Using the above definitions and examples, we can safely define the “youth market” as a sort of a demographic as well as psychographic and behavioural segmentation variables. This so because those who claim to belong to the so called “youth market” usually are of a certain range of age, they also share approximately common interests and behavioural

patterns.

Problems of Researching and Defining Youth Market

However, on one hand, researching and defining the youth market is no easy task, this is due to several reasons. Among many, the fact that the youth market is an ever dynamic one, hence defining it is all but impossible- this is so as the so called “youth market” if the marketers chose to define it by age, is being depleted daily as more young people grow into fully functional adults. Tastes tend to vary with such growth, and the unpredictability of buying and consumption behaviour with such a group makes it harder to research as well. Another dimension which makes the youth market harder to define and research is that youth, or the vast majority of, are not free to spend, as their dollar worth is highly dependant on their parental units or guardians. Yet another issue with researching and defining the youth market is how “fickle” it tends to be, fads and fashions come and go as the tide, what would be considered “cool” or desirable today, could be completely unwanted with in such a short time that the market takes time to respond, thus nullifying the effects of a good research.

Opportunities in terms of Products and Marketing Strategies:

On the other hand, this group or segment also provides tremendous and numerous