Picky, Picky, Picky : Teen-Age Trendoids Make It Tough to Pick the Right Style and Brand
A gift of jeans will please a teen. But not just any pair of blue jeans. And there lies the problem for anyone who has ever tried to buy clothing for a persnickety teen-ager.
A teen-ager’s taste can change faster than the edits in a music video. Last year’s favorite is as passe as Thanksgiving’s leftovers. What’s cool at one high school may be terribly outre at another. So what’s a shopper to do?
Teenage Research Unlimited peers into the psyches and closets of America’s youth. Its interest is in numbers, such as the $82 billion teens spent last year--$55 billion of it their own money--and in what brands teens buy. Lately, in the case of blue jeans, it’s Gitano and Bonjour for young women and Bugle Boy for young men. A safe bet is Levi’s; both sexes put that brand on their preferred list.
Irma Zandl regularly polls a nationwide group of 2,000 young people, ages 8 to 24, on their attitudes and purchases. Her New York-based company, Xtreme, serves such fashion clients as Calvin Klein Fragrances and Coty as well as heavyweights General Motors and Pepsi, which are looking for a piece of the $82-billion pie.
To understand the way teens dress, Zandl says, one must appreciate nuances. Many people will say all teens dress alike, she says. But young people ages 13 to 15 are very different from 16- to 19-year-olds. Although there may be style similarities, details make all the difference.
“They think they are dressing individually, and they are. The subtleties can be as minute as the placement of a hair clip or the size of an earring. But these are as important to them as the width of a stripe on a tie is to a businessman.”
Deciding what teens want from advertising also can be misleading. Teens tend to gravitate toward products and advertisements geared to an older crowd.
Marketing targeted at a 13-year-old will reach a 9- or 10-year-old, Zandl says. She finds teens ages 16, 17 and 18 prefer adult imagery; anything teen-oriented might be dismissed as too childlike.
Buying age-appropriate clothes can lead to unpleasant encounters between parents and teen-agers. At the Glendale Galleria Contempo Casuals store, a salesclerk rolls her eyes in despair when asked what 16-year-old girls want to buy. She waves to the back of the store, where the spandex-infused velvet holiday dresses proliferate. “All those girls want are those tight, skimpy dresses, no matter what their mothers say.”
Parental approval is considered a good thing by most teens, unless it conflicts with that of their peer group, says a researcher for the Center for Advertising Services.
During the middle teens, 14 to 17, kids begin to recognize the control they have over their lives, says Selina Guber of Children Market Research. They “respond intensely to peer pressure and fiercely resist parental control. Acceptance by peers is the key to survival, and bonding rituals emerge as part of the rites of passage. Peer groups dictate behavior, fashion, music games and even food. The peer group can make or break a teen’s acceptance of particular products,” Guber wrote in an article for American Demograhic magazine.
The route to acceptance for many teens is through clothing. “The quickest way to be accepted is by following the trends and buying brand names,” says Marla Grossberg of Teenage Research Unlimited. Brand allegiance is an expression of self-identity, and where the clothing is purchased is as important as the brand name. Researchers have found that teens perceive stores as brands. And their loyalties to certain stores are especially acute.
Which is why, if a 15-year-old wants a pair of five-pocket Levi’s jeans from the Gap, a similar pair of five-pocket jeans manufactured by another company from another store may not be deemed acceptable.
