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Back To School Retail & Shopping Report Highlights: Part One

TeenshoppingOur third annual Back to School Retail and Shopping report is now complete. As we expected the combination of reduced funds received from parents (and other relatives) along with a general mindset of deferring big ticket purchases (think laptops and residence furnishings) will put a heft crimp on planned spending for back to school '08. No doubt the sizable decrease in funds from Mom and Dad attributable to high gas and food prices is the prevailing element for the generally weak outlook. But like pretty much everything else with this audience there is a silver lining, at least for a few retailers who will be the beneficiaries of the shift. Without a doubt the back to school shopping season is already underway. Nearly four in ten respondents (37%) said they already made a back to school-related purchase, and mind you, the survey was completed the week of July 7th. It's not like the audience will just sit this crucial shopping season out completely, they're just changing their shopping habits. More than eight in ten respondents said they plan to do the majority of their back to school related shopping at discount mass retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. What's more, and this is certainly symbolic of current climate, more than half of all respondents (64% of females) said they will only purchase products that are on "sale" or products that come will a special offer like a rebate exclusively for students. Within the fiercely competitive specialty clothing retail category, we expect to see the first pull back from some of the higher priced items like premium denim ($80 and above), dresses, knits and even those $40 and $50 fragrances. The beneficiaries will be the lower priced stores that still carry a certain level of cachet with the audience like Aeropostale and Forever 21 while Abercrombie and Urban Outfitters will see more browsers than purchasers. At the end of the day, the audience is looking for a deal and will use the Internet to find those deals. About two thirds of respondents (64%) said they will spend more time this year compared to last year searching for product deals online and about four in ten respondents (38%) said they are more likely to purchase sale products online this season. All told, respondents plan to spend $427 for back to school items, which is down considerably from $616 last year. Tomorrow I'll jump into more of the must have products and brands as well as go over some of the brand purchaser profiles we created.

July 22, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update On Back To School Retail & Shopping Report

TeenshoppingJust a quick update for everyone as the emails have been rolling in regarding our annual Back to School Retail & Shopping Report. All of the interviews were completed as of this past Tuesday. As soon as we put Lifestyle and the mid-year Insights to bed we'll produce the BTS report. Assuming everything goes as planned, it will drop the week of July 21st. Like last year, I'll post some of the highlights and key findings.

July 10, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report Highlights Part Five: Retail & Shopping

AbercrombielogoOk, last but certainly not least, let's take a look at some of the shopping and retail-related findings from Tween &Teen Lifestyle. Starting with spending, during a typical month teens spend an average of $135 across nine product categories. Nearly half of their spending goes towards clothing and accessories. Clearly, spending habits among teens vary considerably by age, geographic location and job status. If we take a look at just the 16 and 17 year-old teens who have a part-time job where they put in a minimum of 5 hours per week, their spending across the same nine categories jumps sharply to $264 a month which is just about double the average among all teens and about 45% higher than the average for all 16 and 17 year-olds. Switching gears to tween spending, honestly, not that exciting, it's purely  a parental decision event 9 out of 10 times. The only thing that is getting relatively interesting is the relative/grandparent factor which has been increasing of late, meaning there are an increasing number of tweens nationwide who are receiving funds (most of which end up turning into discretionary dollars) from their baby boomer grandparents on a greater frequency--more than four times a year. Don't get too excited though, we usually looking at amounts in the range of $25 to $50 a hit or about $150 to $200 annually. For tweens, it's all about candy, gum and games...last I checked, $200 buys a lot of candy. On the retail front, you'll be most likely to find a teen if you visit a discount mass retailer like a Target or Wal-Mart, a supermarket, a drugstore or specialty retailer, while you'll be most likely to find a tween shopping at a supermarket as well as a discount mass retailer and much farther down the list--a drugstore and a warehouse club like Sam's Club or Costco. No MBA required to tell which group is shopping with a parent most of the time. The most visited specialty clothing retailer among teen females is Victoria's Secret followed closely by Hollister while teen males visit American Eagle Outfitters more often than any other specialty retailer followed by Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. Not as sexy or risque for the tweens. This is part I don't get--you might remember reading a release from Old Navy that came out a couple a months ago about how they want to evolve the brand into more of a destination for working women in their 20s and 30s, I actually think we posted something about it saying why would they do such a thing if their model wasn't broken. So I say again, why the heck would they do this and alienate such a powerful (fast growing too) shopping segment in tweens and their parents. Old Navy, for both tween boys and girls, remains the most shopped at specialty clothing retailer by a considerable margin...well ahead of second place The Gap and third place Aeropostale by about 17 share points. Obviously we must be missing something, because it doesn't make any sense to us. Ok, let's wrap this up...if you ask a teen what's the coolest in trendiest specialty retailer, more often than not the response you'll receive back is Abercrombie & Fitch which is still to certain extent an aspirational brand for the teen market and really more of a high trafficked brand for the college aged market. Ask the same question to a tween and the response you'll receive is...yeah, Old Navy. Who knows, may be they will shift their strategy back to the kids and parents market as their core target...That's all for now.

June 05, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (10)

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report Highlights Part Four: Entertainment & Pop Culture

MileyshotHere's a snippet of some of the entertainment and popular culture-related topics covered in our latest wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. First though, I need to take a few steps back and clarify a few things based on a couple of email inquiries I received this week. The Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report, released on an semi-annual basis, is produced by Youth Trends. The full report along with corresponding customized analysis and a few other value-added items is available exclusively on a subscription basis, as our all other Youth Trends research reports. As we've done several times previously, we use this blog to highlight findings from recently released Youth Trends reports, but that's really about it...we don't use this blog as a platform to release a full version of any our reports, nor do we provide any gratis versions of Youth Trends Lifestyle Reports. Now that we're on all on the same page, let's get back to some highlights from the winter '08 wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. Today I'm looking at some of the entertainment and pop culture data points beginning with movie attendance. During a typical month teens see an average of 1.8 movies (in a movie theater) while tweens see an an average of 1.3. Tween attendance is consistent with a year ago, while the average number of movies teens see in a typical month has increased slightly from 1.5 movies a year ago. The recent spate of youth-targeted fare including led by releases like Iron Man is the cause of the slight bump in attendance over the past year. The most appealing move genres for teens are action/adventure titles followed closely by comedy titles while tweens prefer comedy titles most often followed by animated features and action/adventure. For the third straight year, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp retains the title as the most popular Hollywood celebrity among teen and tween females. Funny man Adam Sandler is tops among the boys followed closely by the two Will's--Will Smith and Will Ferrell. I probably don't have to tell you who the most popular female celebrity is among the teen females..right? Yes, it's Miley Cyrus, followed by Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley and Amanda Bynes. The top female celeb among the boys is Jessica Alba for the second straight year followed by Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale of High School Musical fame and Alicia Keys. Tomorrow, I'll wrap up the highlight posts looking at the retail and shopping category.

June 04, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Highlights Part Three: What's Hot

IphoneOk, let's jump into this third installment of Tween & Teen Lifestyle report highlights by looking at what the audience thinks is cool...right now. We usually see a wide disparity as to what teens think is cool compared to what the tweens think is cool. This wave is really no exception. As a general rule of thumb, anytime we see a certain item score greater 60% t0 68% we deem it relatively ubiquitous. In terms of anticipating future trends, we like to see items come in with a score of 10% to 15% in the first wave and make sizable jump to 30% to 35% in the next wave. Chances are, come the third wave (which is essentially 18 months later), the item will register somewhere between 50% to 70%. Using this working theory on trend identification we'd been able to identify a wide range of items ranging from no brainers like the Wii all the way to more category-specific trends like ringtone downloading a good six to twelve months before everyone starts talking about them. So with all of that said, what's the coolest thing in the world right now for teens? If you said text messaging, then you're right on. Almost all teens (96%) said text messaging was hot right now. Beyond text messaging, 91% of teens said Apple iPods were hot right now. Last year teens had iPods as their number one hot item of the moment. Talk about growth--70% of teens said the Wii was hot right now up from 54% last year and only 21% 18 months ago. Yup, it didn't take a rocket scientist with a Harvard MBA to see this one coming. One thing that surprised us a bit was the iPhone. Yes, we thought teens would give it rather high ratings somewhere between 40% and 50%, but to tell you the truth, the fact that it came in at 75% to land in the fourth spot on the hot list was a surprise. The hottest thing for tweens right now are Apple iPods (92%) followed by the Wii (81%) the DS or DS Lite (77%), downloading music (also 77%) and get ready for this...drum roll please...caring about the environment (71%). After all is said and done, may be the youth of the world will actually end up saving us all. Tomorrow I'll go over some of the latest entertainment and celebrity trends.

June 03, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report Highlights: Part One

HillspartyshotIt's been a little while since the last post, please excuse us, it's been as busy and crazy as ever...which is a good thing. We recently released the results of our comprehensive semi-annual Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report to our clients and wanted to share some of the highlights of the latest report in series of posts over the next week. I'll start in the media category. First off, the notion that teens don't watch that much television and instead play video games or surf the web isn't exactly accurate. In fact, television consumption among teens has actually increased slightly over the past year to an average of 11.9 hours. Teen boys still watch more television than teen girls averaging about an hour and a half more (13.2 hours). Among the younger set, tweens ages 8 to 11, the average amount of television consumed during a typical week is 12.2 hours with tween boys watching considerably more at about 14.5 hours. Remember this report was completed during the school year, so it's hard to say these consumption numbers are that shabby given the fact that these kids are at school five days a week for six or seven hours. Now, moving on to everyone's favorite television-related topic: what they're watching for those 12 or 13 hours each week. Beginning with teen males, three of their top five favorites are all animated shows led by Family Guy followed by The Simpsons and South Park. Somewhat surprising to us was the biggest gainer over the past year is Gen X skewing The Office which moved up nine slots to the third most popular show among all teen males. Go figure. Teens males really get a kick out of Steve Carrell not to mention Rainn Wilson and John Krasinski. Unless you've been living under a rock the past three months or haven't had the great pleasure of flipping around a recent copy of US Weekly or People, you probably know that Lauren Conrad and her infamous gang are shall we say super hot....so super hot that MTV's bonus season of The Hills propelled the show into the number one position for the first time in any Lifestyle Report among teen females. The Hills is ahead of former number one Grey's Anatomy, House, and even American Idol, which dropped four places to sixth. Beyond The Hills, the biggest mover since last year is ABC Family's Greek, which came in tied for eighth. Among tween viewers, the biggest story is that American Idol is no longer number one. Hannah Montana rules the roost among tween girls landing in the top spot for the first time and by a somewhat significant margin while AI dropped about 15 percentage points. Also among tween girls, ABC's Dancing With The Stars moved up four notches to land in the fifth spot. Finally, among tween boys ages 8 to 11, it's all about SpongeBob and Zack & Cody right now. The biggest mover over the past year among tween boys was the ABC comedy The George Lopez Show which shot up an impressive ten spots to secure the seventh spot. More to come next week...have a great weekend.

May 30, 2008 in Research | Permalink | Comments (5)

YT Tween and Teen Lifestyle Report Coming Soon

MinilogoWe'll be releasing the spring wave of our semi-annual Tween and Teen Lifestyle Report next week. The report is a combination of two interview types we conducted with the market, the first being a telephone-based interview while the second was two-sets of focus groups conducted in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta. Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight some of the findings from the report, which covers over 100 individual topics. What were most proud of in this wave is our new innovative analysis of television and online media consumption. Essentially, we are now able to bring together on a micro level (individual programs in addition to the network) and the associated online component. The objective is to go above top-line reporting where we say X% regularly watch Naruto on Cartoon Network and X% visit the Naruto channel on Cartoon Network's web site on a regular basis. Instead, we are looking at the audience by defined segments that include time spent against individual on-air programming and their associated action(s) online or on other platforms like mobile. These findings are beneficial to both media companies and brand marketers because we can now accurately measure more of the coveted so called "360 degree" view of consumer behaviors by on-air programs alongside online and digital assets. We believe this type of analysis is crucial as a growing number of broadcasters pitch multi-platform deals as this season's upfront gets underway. You can email me for more info, but needless to say, we're very excited to get this report out.

April 19, 2007 in Research | Permalink | Comments (0)

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