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Brand Names and Youth: A Developmental Perspective
By Abdul-Lateef Abdullah
08/08/2001
Growing up as a Christian in suburban New York in the early 1980s, I can still remember shopping with my mom for those highly elusive shorts called "JAMS," the hottest Hawaiian shorts money could buy. Every kid in school - but me - seemed to have them, and the only way I could get a pair was to go through my parents. I remember optimistic shopping trips, being full of hope and determination that my mom would break down (or I could break her down) and spend the $40 so I could finally own a pair of those highly sought after shorts. To no avail, however. Mom never did cave and buy me JAMS. At the time, "tragic" was the only word to describe my despair at having to wear generic brand Hawaiian-style shorts to school.
And then there was the "Air Jordan" episode. When Nike's Air Jordan sneakers first came out on the market in the mid-1980s, every kid with even the slightest speck of athletic ability (and even some without any) donned them. Not me. My parents were not impressed with the red and black leather, the Air Jordan logo on the side, the state-of-the-art commercials, or the price. They refused to buy them for me. Being a basketball player, and actually having a strong case as to why the sneakers would help me become a better player and higher jumper, was not enough to persuade them either. Their answer would not change. But did I give up? I didn't have enough money of my own to buy a pair, but what I lacked in resources I compensated for with creativity.
So, I took my old Nike tennis sneakers and some red and black crayons and colored my way to my very own pair of Air Jordans. Once the work was complete, I was so proud of my "new" Air Jordans that I went right out to the basketball court and started testing them out… as if they would somehow feel different than when they were just plain old tennis shoes. Wow, look at how much higher I could jump (in reality, maybe an extra half inch due to excitement)! I was flying, and I didn't even have to pay the astronomical $60 to have the same great thing as the other kids. My excitement, however, only lasted until the other kids showed up. This was something I did not consider. What would my friends say? Well, the first thing they did was look at my feet in astonishment and asked me what happened to my sneakers. "Uh, well, uh, I wanted to give them some more color," was all I could come up with. It was a pretty bad excuse, but in no way could I tell them the truth. So, my crayon-colored Nike tennis shoes, along with a little imagination, would just have to do.
Growing up, brand names were an important part of my life. Twenty-some odd years later, as a Ph.D. student and social worker who has worked with a variety of youth from different backgrounds, I know that the importance of brand names to young people not only still exists, but has grown tenfold.
Young peoples' attachment to brand names has much to do with the practices of the companies that produce and market them. By conducting rigorous research in order to further understand youths' needs, wants, buying patterns and culture - and by acquiring information about the developmental realities of being young - corporations have successfully marketed their products to the tune of millions of dollars every year in annual sales - an amount that is sure to increase as more and more corporations target young consumers to sell their goods.
What is Youth Development?
Over the past decade, youth development has attracted much attention among researchers and practitioners in the U.S. and much of the western world. It has been regarded as a promising programmatic response to a variety of social ills plaguing youth in Western society. The philosophy of youth development reflects a consolidation and re-framing of research and practitioner-based data from diverse fields - including developmental psychology, prevention sciences, resiliency, experiential learning, and adolescent health (Zeldin and Olson, 2000). The core assumption guiding the practice is that youth policies and programs should focus on positive youth outcomes - or desired end results. The phrase "problem free is not fully prepared" is often used by youth-work practitioners as a shorthand by which to assert that the absence of social and behavioral problems among young people does not imply their social and emotional health, or their ability to successfully take on the tasks of adulthood. The goal of youth development is to prevent youth problems by creating contexts that promote developmental processes and positive outcomes like confidence, social skills, initiative, civic competence, expressive abilities, etc…(Zeldin and Olson, 2000).
Although there are many unofficial definitions that exist within the youth development field, the bumper sticker "problem free is not fully prepared" sums up the universal thinking on youth development. Young people who are free of drugs, not in jail, and avoiding other negative behaviors are not necessarily adequately prepared to move on to adulthood with the abilities and competencies needed to be successful (National Youth Development Information Center Website,
www.nydic.org, 2001).
Youth development, as a discipline, examines the developmental needs of young people in order to create social settings that will help them meet these needs in healthy ways. It is grounded in human developmental theory and focuses specifically on adolescence and young adulthood and the unique aspects of these developmental stages. In light of developmental theory, how is it that brand names are so popular among youth today, and why do youth strive so hard, spend so much, and even kill on occasion for those cherished brand names like Nike, Polo and others? In effect, this is a very important issue among youth practitioners, those who work closely with young people in different settings such as schools, after-school programs, and youth groups. In some communities, the wearing of brand name clothes is so important that young people have been known to kill one another over a pair of sneakers, or a jacket, just because of its brand name and the weight that brand name holds among peers. In a world of limited resources, brand names mean status, status among peers means respect, and respect ultimately means survival.
Creating an Identity for Youth
Developmental theory asserts that "adolescence is the transitional period between the dependence of childhood and the assumption of the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. It is a time when young people attempt to understand who they are, what they can do, and why they are here" (Hunter, 1998). Furthermore, for the adolescent, new and unfamiliar situations quickly generate unrest and crisis, arising during an important period of identity development. To establish a coherent identity, adolescents draw from models and ideals found within their environment (Hunter, 1998 and Erikson, 1950). In the materialistic world of the Western (and increasingly Eastern) youth, that environment is greatly influenced by the mainstream media, and ultimately, the corporate machine driving it.
America, being the largest marketplace in the world, is largely defined by its culture of materialism and consumerism. The role of corporations within this culture is primary. Corporations often influence how and why people behave certain ways through marketing techniques aimed at "building, maintaining, or changing attitudes toward brands" (Pecheux, 1999). In terms of youth, the advertising industry knows that this particular group of consumers has and spends a lot of money.
The average American teenager has nearly $60 of disposable income a week, from parental allowances, babysitting and part-time jobs, according to Forrester Research (Economist, 2000). As a result, many corporations have shifted their advertising resources toward targeting young consumers, and by taking advantage of youths' persistence towards influencing parents to buy for them. For example, marketing techniques used today involve "an interlocking of movies with sports, TV and toys that previous generations never experienced," says Lindsay Meredith, a professor of marketing at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. "The movie sells the toy and the toy sells the movie. That means it's not as easy for a parent to say no. So you have the kid who screams his head off to a single morn who's barely getting by and she has to join the race" (Clark and Deziel, 1999). This concentrated selling technique fosters an acute awareness of brands and quality among teens. No other group cares more about what their purchases say about who they are. An Environics survey, for example, found that 66 percent of 15 to 19 year-olds care "a lot" about whether their "clothes are in style" (1999).
For brand name companies with multi-million dollar marketing budgets, techniques like this include a plethora of market tests to better understand youths' buying patterns, likes, dislikes, and behaviors. Corporations have studied youth so closely that they know that adolescence is a time when a young person is searching for an identity and will draw on his or her immediate environs - and resources - to form one. Advertisers use the mass media to provide youth with ideas of what their identity
can and even should be by creating images that say "use this product and you will look cool, be attractive, be seen, be heard, be respected, etc." According to Erikson (1950), questions that characterize adolescence such as "Who am I?" and "What do I want to become," are part of the ongoing sustained effort of identity development and form the drive behind a young person's desire of what they want to be, what they want to feel, and how they want to look. Advertisers, having done their research, know full well where youth are in terms of their search for an identity, and bank on the fact that they are willing to spend whatever they have to form one.
It is well known that corporations proactively exploit the developmental realities of youth to sell their products. From a developmental perspective, however, it is important to understand why youth indulge them, knowing full well that sellers are targeting them so heavily. Annie Grainger, 16, says she is wary of commercials and marketing, yet spends $50 for body-piercings. Eighteen-year-old Mike Landon proudly wears hip-hop clothes with the Phat Farm label and says, "Show me a commercial that says '50 percent off'- that's a good commercial to me." "It's all about pop culture," says Grainger, an eleventh-grader from Toronto. "And pop culture is all about buying." These comments from Canadian youth featured in the March 22nd (1999) issue of
Maclean's magazine, illustrate youths' awareness of being targeted by advertisers of brand names.
Despite knowing what corporate America is up to, young people continue to buy brand names at astonishing rates. Teens have more money in their pockets than ever before, and their influence is everywhere. Last year (1998), nine to 19 year-olds spent an astonishing $13.5 billion in Canada alone. "That number is going to do nothing but go up," says Meredith, "This is the gold rush" (Clark and Deziel, 1999).
Forming an Identity While Still Needing to Belong
According to Kurt Lewin's Field Theory and Adolescence (1946), adolescence is a period of transition during which adolescents must change their group membership. While both the child and the adult have a fairly clear concept of how they fit into their group, the adolescent belongs partly to the child group, partly to the adult group, without really belonging to either group (Muuss, 1996). This condition makes them more dependent on their own age group for support, inspiration, fellowship, and idols than either children or adults are dependent on their age groups (1996). Furthermore, since an identity can be found only in interaction with significant others, a process Erikson (1950) refers to as "psychosocial reciprocity"; the adolescent often goes through a period of a great need for peer group recognition and almost compulsive peer group involvement (Muuss, 1996). The ensuing clannishness and intolerance of "differences" within the group - including petty aspects of language, gesture, hair style, and dress - are explained by Erikson as the "necessary defenses" against the dangers of self-diffusion that remain prevalent as long as the identity has not yet been achieved (1996). Eventually, however, adolescents must free themselves from this new dependency on peers - which has just replaced their dependency on parents - in order to find themselves, that is…to attain a mature identity (1996).
The "compulsive" need to belong and be accepted by one's peer group at this point in the life cycle makes physical image - including dress and overall appearance - significant. The need to obtain acceptance from peers within their group often influences young peoples' decisions to buy brand name clothes and other items. This is compounded by the fact that young people are being bombarded by all types of media that hammer home the notion that brand name goods can help them achieve that elusive, desired image that they yearn for. In fact, according to Solomon (1999), by the age of eight a child acquires all the skills needed to become an independent consumer, and these skills come from three main sources: parents, peers, and TV.
This combination - the need for peer group involvement and acceptance, individual identity formation, and the barrage of corporate advertising - virtually engulfs today's adolescents in an environment directing them to look, feel and act a certain way. A way that is spoon-fed to them by the corporate producers of brand name goods and services.
Sources:
Anonymous. (2001). "Youth, Inc." Economist, Vol. 357:9-11.
Clark, A. and Deziel, S. (1999). "How Teens Got the Power." Maclean's, Vol. 112:42-47.
Erikson, E.H. (1950). "Childhood and society." New York: Norton (2d ed. 1963).
Hunter, E. (1998). "Adolescent attraction to cults." Adolescence 33: 709-715.
Lewin, K. (1946). "Behavior and development as a function of the total situation." In L.
Carmichael (Ed.), Manual of child psychology. New York: Wiley.
Muuss, R.E. (1996). "Theories of adolescence." New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pecheux, C. (1999). "Children and attitude toward the brand: A new measurement scale."
Journal of Advertising Research 39: 19-29.
Solomon, M. C. (1999). Consumer Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zeldin, S. & Olson, J. (2000). "Towards an understanding of adult attitudes towards
adolescents: The role of community connectedness." Submitted, Journal of Research on
Adolescence.
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