consumer behaviour of young adult in singapore

consumer behaviour of young adult in singapore

Copyright MCB UP Limited (MCB) 1999
Thomas Tan Tsu Wee: Associate Professor of Marketing and Tourism Management, School of Accountancy and Business, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Introduction
New unifying force of teenagers
Many articles have appeared in recent years about teenagers as a social and consumption group in various countries, especially in the West, emphasizing the teenagers' lavish purchases and expenses on a great variety of goods, in particular branded products. A recent article in Fortune Magazine talked about a new unifying force of teenagers. From Los Angeles to Tokyo, the teenagers appear to share amazing similarities in taste, language and attitude. Teens almost everywhere also buy a common gallery of products (Reebok sports shoes, Procter & Gamble's Cover Girl make-up, Sega and Nintendo video games, Pepsi Cola's new Pepsi Max, the latest Kodak cameras and Motorola beepers). In an interesting experiment cited in the same article, the New York City advertisement agency BSB Worldwide videotaped teenagers' rooms in 25 countries. From the gear and posters on display, it is hard to tell whether the rooms are in Los Angeles, Mexico City or Tokyo.
It is important for researchers to further explore this idea of a global teenage lifestyle, as this concept has far-reaching marketing implications. Marketers spend millions of dollars each year to reach out to teenagers around the world, many of them assuming that a similar marketing mix and strategy would be correct to take in all their markets. However, the truth is far more complex and this article attempts to show this by drawing on empirical and secondary data from a wide variety of sources.
Primary research in Singapore
Teenagers constitute 221,412 or 7 percent of the estimated 3 million population living in approximately 750,000 households in Singapore. They form an important segment in the population with tremendous drive to spend plus the financial ability and the "pester power" to satisfy their wants and desires. The purpose of this survey in Singapore was to gain a deeper insight into the mindset of today's teenagers, in regard to issues such as key concerns and values, ownership of merchandise and brand names, media habits and lifestyle.
Research methodology
Multi-stage sampling procedure
The content of this article is based on the results of interviews with 600 teenagers aged 14 to 19 years at their residences from June to August 1996. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to pick the households for interview. Briefly, the whole area of Singapore was divided into 3,700 smaller reticulated units (RUs). Each RU consisted of approximately 200 households units of about the same type of housing, e.g. public housing in one- and two-room flats, three room flats and bigger flat types to private condominiums and landed properties.
We then randomly selected a certain number of RUs. After the selection of these RUs, we picked a starting point in a particular block or housing estate and systematically skipped every three to five apartments or houses until the required number of households had been selected. In this manner about 2,000 households were contacted and we eventually interviewed 600 teenagers. The large number of households was required because not all households had teenagers we could interview.
Teenagers' transitional years
Teenagers span the years between 13 and 19. In the Singapore context, these are students in Secondary One classes to polytechnic or university students. Some could be working if they had left school after their "O" level or "A" level examinations. These teenagers are by no means a homogenous group. They can be broken up into early teens (13 to 14 years), middle teens (15 to 17 years) and late teens (18 to 19 years). There are also differences between those who are working and those teenagers presently in schooling - the first group being more independent and mature than the second group. Nevertheless, there are some common characteristics of teenagers which could be summed up as follows:
- They are adjusting to a physically maturing body including awareness of sexual feelings and physical prowess.
- They have ambivalent feelings towards the dependency and security of childhood and the independence of adults.
- The growing importance of peer groups as far as their opinions and values are concerned in regard to winning acceptance.
Understanding teens' lifestyles and consumption patterns
Cultural meanings
According to Bocock (1993, p. 67), "all consumption is always the consumption of symbolic signs". Cultural goods on which the consumer, in this case the teenagers, lavish time, attention and money are charged with cultural meanings. From the culturally constituted world through the advertising and fashion systems to the consumer goods themselves, meanings are being constantly conveyed. Symbolic interactionism takes this one step further by looking at the way people act towards things in line with the meanings the things have for them (Blumer, 1969). This implies that the meanings of an object are basically a property of human behaviour, which is affected by social interaction and communication and the anticipated and actual responses of others. In fact, according to Leigh and Gabel (1995, p. 28), the many products and brands found in the consumption world act as social tools for communication between the individual and significant others. For teenagers, two general propositions of product symbolism as spelt out by Leigh and Gabel (1995, p. 28) are especially relevant as follows:
- () (1)Symbolic purchasing behaviour is more likely to be exhibited when the consumer lacks knowledge about how to perform a certain required role; and
- () (2)The more complete and consistent the set of product symbols possessed by a consumer, the higher the probability of successful role performance.
"Dramaturgical" model
The impression management aspect of teenagers also fits in well with the "dramaturgical" model espoused by Goffman (1959), Featherstone (1991) and others in which one always seeks to present oneself in the best possible light. Manstead and Hewstone (1995, p. 316) write:"Impression management activities thereby permit the participants to define who each will be and permit interactions to run smoothly and efficiently ... they are instrumental in acquiring social and material outcomes. Success and status in everyday life are closely related to people's abilities to construct identities that are valued and rewarded by other members of society ... self-esteem varies, at least in part with their successes in impressing others."
It is understandable, therefore, why teenagers as a rule put so much emphasis on their dress and looks since they are more likely than most people to be conscious of how others think and assess them in their constant search for acceptance and identity. Their sense of who they are and their search for identity is therefore a key aspect of their lives. The needs of these young people for autonomy, identity and a sense of belonging go a long way in explaining their fashion taste, from clothes to hairdo to their musical and sports preferences. It is no wonder that from the early teen years, they exhibit a strong affinity for physical objects such as clothes, footwear, fashion accessories etc., using them as symbols of who they are.
This trait explains their obsession with brands - research in the West has shown that even young children are very brand conscious. At a young age, they can recall brand names and the products associated with them. This observation, however, is not borne out in societies with low brand awareness and advertisement, such as China and Vietnam. Even in a developed country like Singapore, brand awareness and usage are very selective as attested by Seah (1995), who discovered two distinct clusters of teenagers she called the "down-to-earth" and the "sophisticated extroverts".
Quest for identity
The teenagers' quest for identity underlines a claim for individuality. However, it is ironic that this quest for individuality is in fact highly conformist in terms of clothes, music, sports and language. In this sense teenagers are similar in many ways, so that researchers can talk about a global teenage lifestyle spanning geographical and cultural boundaries. It would appear that a common love and interest in music, sports and computer games help shape a camaraderie not just among the local teenagers but with teenagers of other developed countries as well.
This observation is also applicable to Singapore teenagers covered in the 1996 Teenagers' Survey, though the favourite brand for casual wear was not any global name but Giordano, a local home-grown retailer of reasonably priced T-shirts, jeans and pants. Among the girls, Clinique and Maybelline were the most popular brands of cosmetics instead of Cover Girl, while in sports shoes Nike was more popular than Reebok. However, the survey did not uncover any big brand addiction or lavish spenders, images often associated with teenagers.
Teens' relationship with their families
Much of teens' emotional stability, or the lack of it, can be attributed to the family, in particular through the teens' relationship with their parents. Conventional wisdom sees parents as having rocky relationships with their teenage children. However, study after study reveal that the overwhelming majority of teenagers feel a mutual love and respect for their parents, though conflict and disagreements are inevitable (McMahon, 1996, pp. 182-3). A report by the Brainwaves group, a consumer research company in New York City, in 1996 showed that eight out of every ten teenagers choose the family as the important "guiding principle" of their lives. Many even see the family relationship as important - more significant than their "relationship with friends", "having fun" or "making the world a better place".
Changes as a result of modernization
In the West the family has gone through tremendous changes as a result of modernization. In many countries, like the USA, over half of all marriages end in divorce. As a result, the nuclear family of parents and children have been replaced by a myriad forms - be it a single parent, a stepfamily, a blended household composed of children from one or more previous marriages and even co-habitating couples. It is estimated that in the USA, over 50 percent of children born in the 1980s will spend at least part of their childhood or adolescence in one of these non-traditional family structures. For both parents and children alike, transitioning into one of these new forms of family can be a painful experience. Common feelings expressed by teenagers over their parents' divorce include sadness, anger, confusion and denial. The teenagers would typically exhibit behavioural problems both at home and at school, with a tendency to experiment with drugs as a form of escape.
In Asia, divorce rates, though rising, tend to be lower than in the West. The nuclear or extended family is still the norm in many countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea or Singapore. The close family ties and parenting style in Asia also make Asian teenagers less rebellious and permissive. Asian parents tend to be more demanding, i.e. the parents demand and expect responsible and mature behaviour from their children, compared to Western parents who are more permissive in their parenting style. Asian parents tend to be protective over their children's welfare even in the friendship arena. They realize that since their children spend quite a few of their waking hours with friends, these friends could easily influence many aspects of their children's lives - their decisions and behaviour, dress and hairstyles and even their values and attitudes. To the extent that they can control the situation, these parents screen the schools their children attend, the friends they mix with and the places they go to. This does not mean that there are no misbehaving youths in Singapore. A recent report in the local newspaper highlighted teenagers kissing in public, in their school uniforms, and the occasional youth gang fight. However, parents, schools and the authorities seem determined to contain if not stamp out these transgressions.
Long school hours
In Singapore, society's and parents' emphasis on education means that the typical teenage lifestyle is crammed with long hours in school and tuition classes after school. In addition, many teenagers in Singapore tend to remain in school longer, going on to polytechnics and the universities. They tend to receive an allowance from their parents and continue living at home until they get married (usually around 28 years old for men and 26 years for women). This is quite unlike the Western pattern, where teenagers leave home and live on their own once they go to college or university.
The supportive family environment and the relatively long education period means that young people, even as old as 28 years, are free from real adult responsibilities. Because of this household arrangement, much of the consumer consumption is still channelled through parents, even though teenagers have an effective influencing role. The image of a fun-loving, brand conscious and free spending Western-type teenager is therefore very much a myth in many countries in Asia, including Singapore.
This is in contrast to the whirlwind lives of many American teenagers. According to the Brainwaves study, American teenagers reported more stress and academic anxiety than their Asian peers, even though they spend less time on schoolwork. Asian teenagers know they are expected to do well in school; but American teenagers feel obliged not only to do well in school, but also to have many friends, be good at sports, date and be employed in some part-time job.
Computer-literate generation
Teenagers are very well informed
Another characteristic of teenagers today is that they are very well informed. The older generation may grow up with television and information technology, but it is the young who inherit them. They start at a more sophisticated stage and are already tapping into an expanded school curriculum and the mass media. Children's and teenagers' consumption of television is extremely high. A study by Roper Starch in the USA found that 50 percent of eight to 12-years-olds and 64 percent of 13 to 17-years-olds have TV sets in their rooms. It is said that by the time American children finish high school, they will have spent more than 20,000 hours watching TV, almost double the 11,000 hours they have spent in the classroom. In addition, middle-class teenagers are exposed to videos, CDs and VDUs not to mention more conventional mass media such as newspapers and magazines. The next wave is of course the Internet, through which many teenagers are already plugged into cyber relationships with other teenagers and where knowledge and information are literally at one's fingertips.
In Singapore, teenagers are also very exposed to TV and the mass media. Similar to America, the penetration of TV is very high - almost all households own TV sets, with many households having more than one set. Ownership of videocassette and CD players is also high - at about 75 percent. The popularity of personal computers and, correspondingly, the facility to access the Internet increased from 11 percent in 1988 to about 35 percent in 1996. About 80 percent of teenagers watched TV regularly according to the Singapore survey, while 70 percent regularly tuned in to the radio. Almost all the teenagers interviewed read the daily newspapers, about 60 percent read magazines such as 8-Days (the local TV guide) and, among female teenagers, they also read Her World and Cleo.
Broader world view
The net result is that teenagers in Singapore and elsewhere have a broader world view and deeper understanding of global issues, whether they are about other cultures and lifestyles, environmental pollution, conservation, technological discoveries or innovations. The exposure to national and other issues, however, is a double-edged sword. Some studies have shown that while teenagers appreciate the vast possibilities of a better life through technology, there is also a growing feeling that the world at large is an increasingly dark and threatening place. Many have expressed their impotence to do anything about the malaise they see happening around them - such as street crimes, the drug scene, unemployment, pollution, racism, natural disasters, genocide and wars. They feel, quite justly, that they have inherited a diseased world and much of this anger is directed at adults who are seen as responsible for the bad state of affairs. Their response is often to immerse themselves in their own friends and families as a protection against the hostile world outside and to adopt a "live for today" lifestyle.
Western teenagers are more pessimistic
According to a report by the Brainwaves group, its survey of 25,000 middle-class teenagers in five continents in 1995-96 showed that Western teenagers are far more pessimistic about the future than teenagers in developing countries. In countries like the USA, Western Europe and Japan, fewer than one in five agreed that the world would improve in their lifetime. However, the Brainwaves survey showed that in developing countries such as Korea and Vietnam, young people were more optimistic. This could be due to their belief that "they have no place to go but up". Similarly, the Singapore survey showed that young people see themselves as having opportunities their parents did not have and thus have expectations of greater material wealth than their parents. A total of 87 percent of the teenagers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their present life in the survey and 69 percent of them felt that their present generation was better off than their parents' generation.
Living for the moment or planning for the future
In another study of 500 young people across 16 countries in 1997, Gfk, an international market research company, found that across Europe most youths were notably hedonistic. They "live for the moment" and were more interested in their immediate environment and circumstances than in politics, wars and some other worldly issues. Yet there was a small group of socially conscious youths, particularly from the UK, who were surprisingly mature in their strongly held views against racism and homophobia, and were well informed about how, for example, AIDS is contracted and the downside of drug abuse.
In Asia, exposure to the mass media and international issues is selective and varies from country to country. However, even in a high-tech and networked society like Singapore, teenagers tended to be more idealistic in their expectations than hedonistic. The top five concerns of Singapore teenagers in the 1996 survey are shown in Table I.
Universal human aspirations
"To be happy" and "healthy" are universal human aspirations though the young are notably idealistic in trying to achieve these goals. "To do well in studies", "have a successful career" and "have lots of money" are practical considerations and goals involving hard work, getting along well with others and plain luck. In this context, Singapore teenagers appeared to be highly conventional and well adjusted in their concerns and aspirations, imbibing from their parents the importance of education as the pre-condition for a successful career and making lots of money.
The need for achievement, i.e. "accomplishing as much as I possibly can", appeared to characterize the respondents in the Brainwaves study. It was the highest among Chinese youths and lowest among the Japanese. The lack of ambition among Japanese youths appeared to be due to a sense of complacency that they wil