I think that marketers and researchers should be allowed to do whatever they can in order to find out what teenagers are interested in. Everyone needs to make money, and whether or not you are good at your job depends on how much you make, especially when it comes to people in the marketing and research business. Teenagers are definitely influenced by the media because they are very impressionable, ever since younger years. When kids are even younger, they look up to parents, older sibling or cousins, or whoever is older and “cool.” Who doesn’t want to be cool, right?
The ethnography study was something I found to be very interesting as well as effective. If teenagers are letting these people come to their homes and raid their closets, then who cares? It’s not as if they are intruding and not asking for permission. I think that that is a great way to find out what teenagers are into and how they feel about certain things, especially if they do their research in the right way and have people from all over the United States in all different towns and populations.
What better way to find out how to market and advertise? This way, it’s coming straight from the mouths of exactly who is spending the most money. Conducting surveys, taking pictures and making videos is definitely not going too far, and that is probably the best way to get accurate data besides raiding someone’s room and following them around asking questions all day. $150 billion was estimated to have been spent on teenagers in 2001, and I’m sure that number for last year is still about the same. Clearly, its important that companies are producing the right merchandise to sell to teenagers and adults alike (considering how much parents spend on teenagers).
From my personal experience, if you are a good, fun, nice, enjoyable, and of course “cool” person, what you wear or listen to or what you’re into do not matter. There are different groups of people who are into different fashions, different music, different movies, and different interests in general. I don’t feel like everyone tries to be the same, but there are some who just don’t know what they want, so they find out what they like through their friends. The marketing media is doing what they are supposed to, and it’s not that big of a problem with teenagers.