referencebooks (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} referencebooks) wrote,@ 2005-09-20 11:28:00 |
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| Entry tags: | business, marketing, teens |
Getting Wiser to Teens
Getting Wiser to Teens: More Insights Into Marketing to Teenagers
By Peter Zollo of Teen Research Unlimited.
Published by New Strategist Publications, 2004.
This is a hardbound book measuring 6" by 9" and running to 424 pages including the index, plus an author's note and acknowledgments.
As you can tell from the title, this book is an update to previous editions.
Though it is treated as a reference book in our library, it is a book that could also be read cover-to-cover and sold to business people as a regular book. It is a guide to understanding teens, for people who want to view teens as a market for what they have to sell. In other words, it is a book of insights useful for building strategies to manipulate the behavior of teenagers.
The eleven chapters are titled as follows.
- Why Teens Are Important Consumers
- Teen Psyche
- Teen Attitudes
- Teen Types, Trends, and Music
- Teen Social Concerns
- Teens at Home and School
- Teens and Friends
- Teen Lifestyle
- Teens and Brands
- Teens and Media
- Marketing and Advertising to Teens
Each of these chapters have subchapters, with titles like, "Teen Income Sources," "Teen Value Monitor," "What Makes a Person Very Cool," "What Teens Dislike About Being Teen," "Teen / Types: Teen Segmentation System," "Teen Social Concerns by Gender," "How Parents Punish Teens," "What Teens Usually Do at a Party," "'Like to Do' versus 'Actually Do,'" "What Makes a Brand 'Cool,'" "Where Teens Meet Their Friends."
Rather than directly providing strategies for how to manipulate teens, this book communicates background knowledge, generated from survey research and focus groups, about teens and how they live. Its descriptions of teen life are written simply and communicate a lot of information. It is a voyeristic book, in the sense that what it communicates are aspects of life that teens usually aren't eager to share with adults.
It is rather interesting that the information generated by all of this research is not being presented to parents and teachers, whose uses of it would be the most legitimate, but to people who are after the kids' money, and who are in fact competing with parents and teachers for a share of influence over teens' decision making as well as their ultimate value formation.
A disturbing book, useful for somewhat nefarious practical purposes.
