Making Sense of Teenagers… Or at Least Their Shopping
A study in Journal of Business Research explains teen shopping and spending by breaking them up into three distinct groups: “Social Butterflies,” “Confident Techies,” and “Self-contained Shoppers". “Social Butterflies” are happiest going to the mall, while “Confident Techies” would rather shop online. “Self-contained Shoppers” are the least enthusiastic about shopping generally.
Take aways
- Almost half of teens do their shopping in malls—mostly to socialize (“Social Butterflies”).
- Extraverted teens with high self-esteem are the most likely to shop online (“Confident Techies”).
- About one-third of teens (mostly boys) are not really interested in shopping—either online or offline. Nevertheless, these teens still spend over $100 per month (“Self-contained Shoppers”).
- The average teen spends almost 4 times as much time—and 10 times as much money!—shopping at the mall than online.
Study information
The question?
How can marketers segment the teen market with the purpose to predict teens’ retail channel choice?
Who?
583 14- to 18-year-olds
Where?
A mid-sized southeastern city US
How?
Teens filled out a questionnaire about their personality (self-esteem, extraversion, communication with friends and family) and shopping. Specifically, the researchers compared mall shopping (offline) with internet shopping (online).
Facts and findings
Social Butterflies:
- Characteristics: Social Butterflies are extraverted and chat constantly with their friends about shopping at the mall. This group is mostly female (73%), and Black (51%) or White (39%).
- Shopping & spending: Social Butterflies spend the most time and money at the mall, and plan on doing more.
Confident Techies:
- Characteristics: Confident Techies have the highest self esteem and often talk with their friends and family about internet shopping. This group includes both boys and girls, and includes the largest number of Asian Americans.
- Shopping & spending: Confident Techies spend the most time and money shopping online, and plan on doing more.
Self-contained Shoppers:
- Characteristics: Self-contained Shoppers are introverted, have low self-esteem, and don’t talk much about shopping. This group is mostly male and White (Whites are split evenly between Self-contained Shoppers and Social Butterflies.
- Shopping & spending: Self-contained shoppers do the least shopping and spending, but they plan to do more in the future.
- Fun fact: In a month, the average teen spends $145 at the mall and $16 shopping online. With 32 million teens in the U.S., this adds up to 62 billion dollars of spending!
Figure 1: Teen Dollars Spent Shopping Per Month
