Youth Become an Important Global Market Segment

Marketers are continually searching for global consumer market segments to whom products and services can be advertised in a similar fashion all over the world. Many companies are recognizing that the most global segment of all is the youth of the world, as they show amazing similarities in tastes, interests, language, and attitudes. Elissa Moses, author of The $100 Billion Allowance: Accessing the Global Teen Market, says: "Pop culture is totally transient. Teens are simultaneously plugged into two cultural channels—local and global. For global (culture), they are a homogeneous target. This includes music, fashion, film, video games and technology." Marketing experts note that there are more similarities than differences among youthful consumers. Teens in the United States as well as Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia are surfing the Internet, talking on their cell phones, playing video games, watching MTV, going to the movies, and drinking Coke or Pepsi.

Multinational companies recognize that one of their major marketing challenges is tapping into the billions of dollars being spent by young consumers around the world. Global youth is a very ripe and growing market, as there are over 200 million teens in Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim countries of Asia who are converging with the 40 million in the United States and Canada to create a vast, free-spending global market. U.S.-based companies in particular recognize the importance of marketing to young people in foreign markets. The youthfulness of many other countries is far greater than that of the United States, especially in Asia and South America. Twenty-one percent of the population in the United States is age 14 and under versus 25 percent in China, 33 percent in India, 37 percent in the Philippines, 29 percent in Brazil, and 27 percent in Argentina.

The convergence in the lifestyles, tastes, attitudes, and product preferences of young people is being driven by several factors. Many young people around the globe have a strong interest in U.S. culture and lifestyle, and their hunger for Americana is being fed by their access to satellite television and the Internet. Music, movies, and sports are universal languages for young people, and many marketers capitalize on these interests by having celebrities with global appeal appear in their ads targeting youth. Pepsi ads featuring pop-star Britney Spears are shown around the world, while athletes with global appeal such as Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, and Michael Jordan endorse products for Nike and other global marketers.

To tap into the global youth market, companies have to understand young people's common characteristics. For example, Harvard marketing professor Rohit Desphande notes that one of the most important characteristics of young consumers globally is a sense of individualism that goes beyond what their parents' generation felt. He notes that this characteristic is a result of values portrayed in Western music, film, the Internet, and news media. Individualistic values are even prevalent among young people in Asia, where collectivist values have always been the norm. A study of Asian teens conducted by the Roper ASW research firm found that youth between the ages of 13 and 19 ranked values such as individualism, ambition, and freedom much higher than did adults between the ages of 40 and 65.

While many companies are marketing to the similarities of global youth, they must also be mindful of the cultural differences that still exist from one country to the next. For example, while American teens view fast food as a way to eat on the go, youth in other countries favor meals they can savor. Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken are considered upscale restaurants in Asia, and many young people consider them very cool places to go and be seen.

Cellular phones are much more prevalent in Europe than in the United States. For example, 65 percent of 10- to 19-year-olds in the United Kingdom have mobile phones versus less than 20 percent in the United States. Instant messaging and text messaging is widely used in Europe and Japan and has made cell phones in those regions very important possessions for teens, while for American youth the technology is seen as a nice-to-have accessory. European teens consume much of the same media as their American counterparts, with TV and the Internet topping the list of their favorites. However, 67 percent of European boys and 47 percent of European girls consider the Internet

"too American" and would rather buy a local product over the Internet than an American one.

Despite these regional variations, most marketers' attraction to the youth market lies in the youngsters' similarities. Many experts still note that it is difficult to find anything different, other than language, among teenagers in Japan, China, France, Brazil, or the United States. It doesn't matter where they live, the youth of the world are an important market segment and represent a tremendous opportunity for marketers.

Sources: Arundhati Parmar, "Global Youth United," Marketing News, Oct. 28,2002, pp. 1,49; Lisa Bertagnoli,"Continental Spendthrifts," Marketing News, Oct. 22,200l,pp. 1,15; Laurel Wentz, "Japan: The Ultimate Buyers Market," Advertising Age International, January 1997, p. 135.

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