US teen spending rises | WARC | The Feed

US teen spending rises

Spending among US teens has increased in the last year, with beauty items among the primary beneficiaries of this trend, a new study has found.

Why it matters

Teens are an audience that marketers need to understand, both as they are often early adopters of new products and shopping habits, and also as they will be the next generation of customers. Building brand loyalty early with this segment can pay off in the long term.

An insight into teen spending

The latest in a series of semi-annual studies from investment bank Piper Sandler drew on the input of 14,500 teens in the US, with an average age of 15.8 years old. It found:

• Self-reported spending among respondents came in at $2,331, up 3% year on year. Parents contributed 61% of this total.
• Expenditure among female teens outpaced the average, growing by 10% on an annual basis, with clothing (+10%) footwear (+7%) seeing gains with these shoppers.
• Spending on beauty items – cosmetics, skincare and fragrances – leapt by 20% compared with 12 months ago, to $264.
• Amazon was named by 52% of interviewees as their favourite e-commerce site. SHEIN, Nike, Lululemon and Pacsun followed next in the rankings here.

Netflix beats YouTube for daily video use

• Netflix claimed 32% of daily video consumption among the survey contributors, with YouTube on 29%.
• Video games took 12% of spending for the teenage panel, down from 14% on an annual basis. Thirty percent of the sample expect to buy a next-generation gaming console, like the PS5 or Xbox X series, within two years.
• Twenty-six percent of teens own a virtual reality device. Weekly usage of these gadgets stood at 17%.

A look at upper-income teens

• Among upper-income members of the panel, food boasted the highest share of spending for males at 23%. Apparel, on 30%, held the lead position for females on the same metric.
• Discount channels received 13% of outlay among this affluent cohort, up 483 basis points year on year. Off-price channels, by contrast, were down by 346 basis points in the same period.
• Half of this segment wears make-up every day, ahead of an overall average of 41%.

Data sourced from Piper Sandler