Teens wary of online shopping
Research amongst "teenagers on the street" from Vox Pops suggests that, though teens are into fashion and shopping on the high street, they’re not so keen to take that online – preferring instead to use the Internet for social networking, keeping in touch with friends and making new ones.
Let’s look at this and see if we’re surprised (and be grossly stereotypical in the process).
- Teens love hanging around in shopping malls and arcades, and ‘real world’ shopping with their mates.
- Teens are too young to have credit cards.
- Credit cards are (generally) needed to buy things online.
- Social networking online is cool, free, and easy.
Now if someone designed a social networking site that allowed you to run around a virtual shopping centre with your mates, and had some way of purchasing items from credible retailers online without the need for credit or debit card, then that might catch on. You’d have to throw in a virtual ‘hanging around outside Burger King looking slightly intimidating’ module as well.
