4/20/10

Young adults’ phone usage may herald significant changes for retailers

Adolescents may not have the purchasing power of older consumers, but they buy plenty. And they have a powerful influence over what their parents purchase—in-store and online. They’re a consumer force to be reckoned with today—and tomorrow, when they become adults and the amount they buy grows significantly, according to the latest research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Adolescents may not have the purchasing power of older consumers, but they buy plenty. And they have a powerful influence over what their parents purchase—in-store and online. They’re a consumer force to be reckoned with today—and tomorrow, when they become adults and the amount they buy grows significantly, according to the latest research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

As a result, it’s important to watch what they do and how they do it to learn for tomorrow. And what they’re doing in increasing numbers is using mobile, sometimes like mad, says the report.

Many retailers today use text messaging to market to their customers. They may be laying the groundwork for tomorrow. The percentage of young adults using their mobile phones to send at least one text message a day has shot up in the past 18 months from 38% in February 2008 to 54% in September 2009, the study reports. In fact, text messaging has become the most frequent way teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face meetings, e-mail, instant messaging and voice calling as a daily communications tool, finds the June-September 2009 study of 800 adolescents ages 12-17.

And young adults’ use of mobile phones doesn’t stop with texting. Here are other ways adolescents use mobile phones:

• 27% go online via their mobile phone for general purposes
• 23% access social networking sites
• 21% use e-mail
• 11% purchase merchandise

“These findings show that in a very short time cell phones have moved from being a fancy toy in a few teens’ lives to favored communications hubs for most teens that are vitally important to nourishing their ties to friends and coordinating complicated family lives,” says Rich Ling, co-author of the research report and a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, affiliated with the University of Michigan, which works with Pew.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project teamed with scholars from the University of Michigan to conduct the study and the survey results are buttressed by findings from focus groups from four cities, the research center says.

The research also found that:

• 32% of young adults exchange videos on their phones.
• 31% send and receive more than 100 text messages per day—more than 3,000 messages a month.
• 31% exchange instant messages on their phones.
• 21% of teens who do not otherwise go online say they access the Internet on their phones.