Every new generation is refreshing. It’s because they are about change. Marketers selling to the youth or young adult demographic are always trying to catch up in terms of understanding their current preferences. The unique, highly relevant and exciting subset of the young adult market is the college student market.
How big is this market? Well, in 2008, there ware about 22 million students enrolled in full-time and part-time schools in the US. That’s a serious chunk of marketing potential. Here is a brief writeup on the psychographic makeup of the college student market:
1. No-holds barred spending:
It’s like the wife going to town with her rich hubby’s credit card. This demographic loves to spend on discretionary items and they purchase way beyond their years. Their basic needs are met by their parents (to an extent) so these kids have tons of $$ to spend on DVDs, iPod downloads, clothing, entertainment (movies, songs, concerts) , phones, phone plans, travel, fast-food, health, beauty, electronic gizmos, cars and other luxury items. In fact, recently, I’ve seen more college kids with Blackberries than adults.
2. Potential to absorb and develop new brand loyalties:
Most students arrive on campus with brand loyalties in flux. Being secondary consumers, till then, the brands that they were exposed to were primarily because of influences by their parents or friends. iTunes, Facebook and Hotmail/Gmail, which are brands that they were exposed to in their high school years are brands that they may stay loyal to. Ditto with apparel brands like American Eagle or Old Navy. But anything else is fair game. In the college environment, given their new found independence, their purchasing patterns are in a state of flux and change as they freely experiment with new products and services till they find brands that meet their needs.
3. Early adopters/innovators:
College life is all about self discovery, experimentation and learning so it is no surprise that campuses present an ideal petri dish for firms to introduce new products and expose them to the youth market to get feedback. It’s an ideal entry point for any brand awareness, repositioning, new product launches and line extensions.
When Dentyne Ice was launched, a tour bus program was launched with other vehicles and this campaign was specifically targeted to college campus all across the US. Mastercard states that about 75% of all college graduates still use their first credit card 15 years after graduation and about 60% retain their card for life. See the image alongside, to understand how energy drinks have become part of a college student’s beverage of choice.
4. Rapid replenishment of target base erosion:
For marketers, this is a great opportunity as every year, at least 30% turnover takes place with newer students joining college. With so many students in the college environment aiming to develop their personal identities and shape their thinking for the future, it’s no surprise that marketers salivate at the prospect of building their brands with these kids. On-campus product promotions are a key component of marketing strategies aimed at this market.
One of the first places that students go after they enroll is the campus bookstore – Barnes and Noble have a first-mover advantage by exposing their brand early in the game to the students as the students after purchasing their course books also look through what B&N have to offer. Ditto with credit card companies and fast food providers who have space on food courts on campus.
According to MSNBC, the campus crowd spent about $3.6billion online in 2003 and about $8 billion in 2006. True there’s been a slump in the past couple of years because of the economic environment but students still get part-time jobs, earn money and then spend it. This in short is the basic psychographic makeup of a newly minted college student.
A Caveat : The youth market is viewed as a difficult segment to connect with and sell to because of the fluid nature of their beliefs. Brands who are successful in marketing to the youth segment have a strong association with key entertainment interests among youth like music, sports, fashion, video gaming and technology. Just exposing your product to this segment is not enough – an effective approach would involve some form of product integration where the effects are long lasting and measurable. A good example is Dell partnering with universities to sell notebooks or tablets at student discounted prices.
Have you ever considered adding more videos to your blog posts to keep the readers more entertained? I mean I just read through the entire article of yours and it was quite good but since I’m more of a visual learner, I’ve found video to be more helpful.
The college market is nebulous by definition of its core demographic. Setting specific strategies to address them to me is a waste of time because things keep changing all the time. This market does not know what to do. The best thing that marketing professionals can do is have a basic plan in place but be ready to adapt as this evolve. this is what I tend to do.
Mandy, I agree that the very nature of this market makes it difficult for marketers to formulate specific engagement strategies. The plus side of this equation is that by that definition we can always test out new trends to gauge success. Or like you said, we can be open to change as their tastes change.