Teen Girls: Shopping and Texting, Texting and Shopping
Posted by Sheila Shayon on November 26, 2010 12:00 PM
Some might think that social media marketers are cheerleaders of sorts, so maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that a cheerleading brand is rah-rah about social media — and wants to understand teen girls better.
For a start, they're not all as digitally savvy (and brand/fashion savvy) as 14 year-old fashion blogging phenom Tavi Gevinson (above). But they do love fashion, they love to shop, and they love to chat online and on mobile.
Varsity Brands, the teen girl trend-watcher, is a leading organization in the cheerleading world, and so makes its business understanding the lives of teenage women. Varsity partnered with Ketchum (which also just delivered social media analysis to FedEx) in a survey of 1,016 teen girls, ages 13-18, asking how they spend their time in and out of school, how they make purchase decisions and recommendations and who their influencers are.
The study found that, unsurprisingly, teen girls spend vast amounts of time communicating electronically with their peers. Half (49%) spend an hour or more texting daily, 32% spend the same amount socializing online. Conversely, 44% spend less than 15 minutes actually talking on the phone.
As for brand influence, when a teen girl finds a brand she likes, she is most likely to recommend it to a friend/peer (73%) and buy another product by the brand (69%).
Becoming an online fan of the brand (48%), following it on a social media site (30%) or sharing links (17%) is less frequent. Nonetheless, online engagement is an effective influencer, and 55% of teen girls say, “If I see a favorable post online about an item, it will likely influence me to buy it.”
Nicole Lauchaire, VP Corporate Marketing and Communications Varsity Brands, offered insight into the results: “When it comes to spreading ideas via social media, teen girls lead the pack. They are more likely to use online time for connecting, self-expression and relationship building. They are more likely to have used e-mail and are almost twice as likely as boys to have shared photos through a website, posted a comment on a blog or community, blogged themselves or kept an online journal.”
She continued, “Social media is creating a new environment for influence, and teen power in that realm is a big part of it. In the survey, we also compared participation by girls in athletics and found that the number of teen girls participating in athletics has increased by 19% in just ten years. Both these trends indicate that teen girls are highly engaged and participating in many different platforms to connect.“
Perhaps the most significant takeaway is that the online phenomenon has created an entirely new means for teen girls to influence their peers, and the ones who are most likely to influence others are also more likely to be influenced themselves.
Click here to download a .pdf of Varsity's Teen Influencer report.
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