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The Central Statistics Office Population Forecast predicts that the number of 18 to 24-year-olds in Ireland will fall from 475,000 in 2001 to 375,000 in 2011. However, despite the drop, Dublin-based Amarach Consulting believes that the value of the youth market will remain high. In fact the company says that the anticipated reduction in the size of Ireland's "tech generation" over the next decade will not overly affect technology companies.
But its research suggests that there will be some consequences for advertisers and marketers seeking to capture a share of Ireland's EUR5 billion youth market. Chief among these is that those selling to the youth market will face an increasingly competitive landscape as they compete for a smaller pool of youth customers.
"There will be a decline in the country's youth population, but at close to 400,000 it will still be a large market," Bettina MacCarvill, senior research consultant at Amarach, told ElectricNews.Net. "Also, people who are in that age bracket now will continue to spend money on technology as they grow older."
This analysis will be important for technology and telecoms companies as young people are major consumers of their products and services. According to research carried out by Amarach on behalf of the Decode consortium, 65 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds use the Internet, 27 percent have a DVD player, and 95 percent send text messages at an average rate of 37 a week. Overall, the Irish youth market is worth just over EUR5 billion annually.
MacCarvill went on to say that in order to combat the increasing pressure that advertisers will face in the more competitive youth market, businesses should "embrace multimedia."
"The mobile phone is an incredibly important device for people in this age bracket and will continue to be in the coming years. If companies want to tap into the youth market effectively, they must find ways to communicate and transact with it over mobile devices," commented MacCarvill.
It would appear that young people are receptive to both e-mail marketing and SMS marketing as long as they are permission based, and are beneficial or relevant to the recipient. According to the Amarach research, 46 percent of respondents to a survey said that text messaging is a good way for companies to advertise their products or services.
It also found that there were just over 300,000 "youth surfers" in 2002, with most of them likely to be between 18 and 19-years-old, ABC1s and 3rd level students. Home was the most widely used location to access the Internet, followed by college or school terminals.
Nearly 30 percent of the respondents had a DVD player with 19 percent planning to get one in the next 12 months, while 26 percent had access to Sky digital services.
The report contained additional good news for providers of technology designed to save time. According to the research, time is rated as a valuable commodity by young people. "With 76 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds in some sort of paid employment...young people are looking for high levels of return on the activities they choose to spend their time on and are willing to spend to achieve that return, " said the report.
The survey of 500 18 to 24-year-olds was carried by Amarach on behalf of the Decode consortium, which is comprised of 98FM, The Star, TV3, Clear Channel and Irish International OMD.
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