According recent research British 15 to 19 spend meaningfully less time doing homework than they used to as a result of their use of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo (Wray, 2008). What is more, a balance of nearly third of 15 – 19 years olds say they are doing less homework (see picture below).
From a marketing point of view it is clear that teenagers have become the easy target for variety types of e-marketing. Even though most of their on line time young people spend at social networking sites they also search for information, music files or videos. As a consequence, they might be attracted by high number of adverts placed on the Web.
On the other hand the dilemma arises …do we want to communicate with less educated group of customers? If your answer is “yes”…because you think it does not matter, think about it a bit longer. If teenagers do not do they homework they get lower results and there is a risk that they future career might not seem too bright. They also can face problems with finding well paid job so their disposable income might be smaller. Using expressive example…Would you like to spend your time and effort on advertising new BMW to council tenants? Probably not…because you know this group of customers simply cannot afford to get one…
Yes, you right but instead of beating them perhaps we should join them. What about rethink the whole way we educate children, revamp the whole pedagogical rationale and educational system, adapt to embrace what is here now thus creating more interest from young people. Why not homework on social network, send them to research, find thing on line or exchange info with other people from around the world?
By: prwirelessch on March 6, 2008
at 10:23 pm
You are right! But probably if this problem is not solved in the future and even gets worse we’ll get a mass of people who are easy to influnce on. And thats an opportunity for mass marketing!
By: Rita Vasileva on March 8, 2008
at 2:49 pm
I’d go further and not restrict the discussion to school age teenagers. It’s very similar with university students, isn’t it?
Btw I understand about market segmentation, but market elitism? That sounds dangerous to me. Shouldn’t most organisations be targeting the mainstream?
By: Richard Bailey on March 9, 2008
at 9:21 am
I think we shouldn’t forget about the reverse of the medal:teenagers have a good knowledge of computers and it seems to as a competitive advantage in future)))
By: olgakamshitskaya on March 14, 2008
at 3:34 am