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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
VII. Special Topics and
Perspectives
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE 20-2
20. International
Advertising and Promotion
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
Youth Become an Important Global Market Segment
Marketers are continually searching for global consumer
market segments to whom products and services
can be advertised in a similar fashion all over the
world. Many companies are recognizing that the most
global segment of all is the youth of the world, as they
show amazing similarities in tastes, interests, language,
and attitudes. Elissa Moses, author of The $100
Billion Allowance: Accessing the Global Teen Market,
says: “Pop culture is totally transient. Teens are simultaneously
plugged into two cultural channels—local
and global. For global (culture), they are a homogeneous
target. This includes music, fashion, film, video
games and technology.” Marketing experts note that
there are more similarities than differences among
youthful consumers. Teens in the United States as well
as Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia are surfing
the Internet, talking on their cell phones, playing
video games, watching MTV, going to the movies, and
drinking Coke or Pepsi.
Multinational companies recognize that one of their
major marketing challenges is tapping into the billions
of dollars being spent by young consumers around the
world. Global youth is a very ripe and growing market,
as there are over 200 million teens in Europe, Latin
America, and the Pacific Rim countries of Asia who are
converging with the 40 million in the United States and
Canada to create a vast, free-spending global market.
U.S.-based companies in particular recognize the
importance of marketing to young people in foreign
markets. The youthfulness of many other countries is
far greater than that of the United States, especially in
Asia and South America. Twenty-one percent of the
population in the United States is age 14 and under versus
25 percent in China, 33 percent in India, 37 percent
in the Philippines, 29 percent in Brazil, and 27 percent
in Argentina.
The convergence in the lifestyles, tastes, attitudes,
and product preferences of young people is being
driven by several factors. Many young people around
the globe have a strong interest in U.S. culture and
lifestyle, and their hunger for Americana is being fed
by their access to satellite television and the Internet.
Music, movies, and sports are universal languages for
young people, and many marketers capitalize on these
interests by having celebrities with global appeal
appear in their ads targeting youth. Pepsi ads featuring
pop-star Britney Spears are shown around the
world, while athletes with global appeal such as Tiger
Woods, Lance Armstrong, and Michael Jordan endorse
products for Nike and other global marketers.
To tap into the global youth market, companies have
to understand young people’s common characteristics.
For example, Harvard marketing professor Rohit
Desphande notes that one of the most important characteristics
of young consumers globally is a sense of
individualism that goes beyond what their parents’ generation
felt. He notes that this characteristic is a result
of values portrayed in Western music, film, the Internet,
and news media. Individualistic values are even prevalent
among young people in Asia, where collectivist values
have always been the norm. A study of Asian teens
conducted by the Roper ASW research firm found that
youth between the ages of 13 and 19 ranked values such
as individualism, ambition, and freedom much higher
than did adults between the ages of 40 and 65.
While many companies are marketing to the similarities
of global youth, they must also be mindful of the
cultural differences that still exist from one country to
the next. For example, while American teens view fast
food as a way to eat on the go, youth in other countries
favor meals they can savor. Pizza Hut and Kentucky
Fried Chicken are considered upscale restaurants in
Asia, and many young people consider them very cool
places to go and be seen.
Cellular phones are much more prevalent in Europe
than in the United States. For example, 65 percent of
10- to 19-year-olds in the United Kingdom have mobile
phones versus less than 20 percent in the United
States. Instant messaging and text messaging is
widely used in Europe and Japan and has made cell
phones in those regions very important possessions
for teens, while for American youth the technology is
seen as a nice-to-have accessory. European teens consume
much of the same media as their American counterparts,
with TV and the Internet topping the list of
their favorites. However, 67 percent of European boys
and 47 percent of European girls consider the Internet
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