The kids have no money
So the worlds youngest billionaire is the guy who invented facebook. Companies every day fight over access to sites like myspace and facebook.
Why?
AFAIK, the appeal is that "that's where the kids are".
But this is outdated for two reasons:
1) Kids are getting used to stealing stuff anyway. this does not make good customers.
2) Kids are generally broke, even UK students now face university fees
3) With the global credit crunch, kids aren't likely to be able to get access to cheap credit to buy stuff they way they used to.
In short, the teenage market is crap. Why sell to them? Retired people often have more money, and the 40-50 age group are rolling in cash, because they are at the peak of their careers, and the kids have left home.
Why try and sell to people with no money?
Why?
AFAIK, the appeal is that "that's where the kids are".
But this is outdated for two reasons:
1) Kids are getting used to stealing stuff anyway. this does not make good customers.
2) Kids are generally broke, even UK students now face university fees
3) With the global credit crunch, kids aren't likely to be able to get access to cheap credit to buy stuff they way they used to.
In short, the teenage market is crap. Why sell to them? Retired people often have more money, and the 40-50 age group are rolling in cash, because they are at the peak of their careers, and the kids have left home.
Why try and sell to people with no money?
posted by cliff at
10:16 AM
4 Comments:
One reason I've seen a few times is that kids may be poor compared to older people, but virtually 100% of their income is disposable. Doesn't apply to university students, but it's true for younger kids (and university students with no idea how to manage their money).
By
Anonymous, at 10:52 AM
Free games with micro-transactions are the way forward then i guess. Atleast you can make some money on advertising if no one buys anything from you. Look at MySpace, Facebook and Google. All free services that make millions. I don't see why games couldn't do the same thing. Hell, I'm sure some people make enough money plainly off donations for their free games.
We're just in a transitional period where the old marketing model is becoming outdated. People are so focused on stamping down piracy when really that's just how the world is right now, and there's nothing that can be done about it. No one will ever solve piracy, no digital security will ever be uncrackable. Unless you convert to writing online games that need realtime verification that you are who you say you are. Or do what 3DBuzz do and individually watermark everything you sell to the person who bought it.
Maybe people should start being more creative about how they make money off of their games rather than relying purely on how it's always been done in the past.
By
Gavin Clifton, at 2:06 PM
It all depends on what type of product you are trying to sell.
1) While "kids" may be more likely to steal intellectual property, I don't think that you can argue that the majority of young people would shop lift or rob people. If you are advertising a tangible item, then most people will still purchase it if they want it.
2) Students may be "broke", but that generally does not stop them spending money. They are given student loans which they do not appreciate the value of because they don't have to earn them and which pay back of seems in the distant future. They can and will always get cheap credit from banks for the simple reason that with most people, once the banks have them as a customer, they have them as a customer for life. Therefore the banks are prepared to make loans etc. even at a loss to catch a future customer.
Many students don't really understand or bother to consider the implications of debt, and they come from an "I want it now" generation where rather than saving up for things and selecting those things that they can afford, they buy it now and worry about paying for it afterwards.
I think that the older generation are generally a lot more savvy with their money. They have had to earn it, they have gone through struggling to pay their mortgage, and they really appreciate the value of it, so they are a lot less willing to be parted from it. They will be more set in their ways about the products they buy - "I've always bought product A and liked it, so why change to product B?". They will be more suspicious of new technology, again having gone through life without it will want it to be justified to them why they need it. They are likely to be less influenced by peer pressure. They have more life experience and are therefore more likely to see through "crap" products.
Also, of course, Facebook is a fantastically easy medium to reach people through. They have a new feature now where you can target adverts at people of a specific age, occupation, gender, etc. What other advertising medium offers such specific targeting of people?
By
Tom, at 2:23 PM
Some remain cautious about the value of demographic or social class segmentation. Any approach to dividing down large numbers of people into subgroups is limited by the assumption of homogeneity within each segment. Certainly social class is a likely indicator of the types of services someone may or may not use but used alone it provides little information about how to design the experience of that service for that group.
By
Krystian Majewski, at 4:55 PM
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