Marketing to tween girls

This week, I explored two articles relating to marketing practices and tween girls. According to the first article, Tweens: A billion dollar market by Rebecca Leung, “25 million kids, between the age of 8 and 13, form the most powerful consumer group since the baby boom.” Clearly, marketers are paying special attention to the attitudes and tastes of this age group.

Leung discloses that marketing firm Girls’ Intelligence Agency (GIA) infiltrates slumber parties by providing “Alpha Girls” as young as eight with boxes of never before released products to share with their friends. To me, this takes product placement, already rampant in movies, video games and television programs, to a whole new level. This article was my first encounter with these “slumber parties” and I immediately wondered what role parents played in allowing such direct marketing to their daughters. My question was answered by the second article, How Young Is Too Young: Marketing To The Tween Generation, published by the Journal of Business Case Studies: “The Tween and mom act as one consumer.” Parents want their kids to be comfortable and happy, and with the large amount of disposable income many families have, parents can provide their tweens with the products to facilitate this.

Of course I would love if companies sent me boxes of goodies to share with my friends, but as an adult, I would be aware of the companies’ motivations for doing so. I’m unsure if an eight-year-old can be as savvy of a consumer. The Journal of Business Case Studies article presents several questions for consideration:

• “Is it wrong for a company to target tweens with clothing options that many (e.g., parents, teachers, school principals, etc.) would consider inappropriate for their age?”
• “Does the nature of tween market bring more pressure on the retailers to adopt a higher ethical approach?”

I think our society has struggled for decades with what is and is not appropriate for children, but this concern is now magnified with the fairly recent increase in marketing aimed at tweens.