22 May 2009
Brands bolster the egos of teenagers and their sense of belonging to a group. Through brands, they find a balance between isolation and solidarity. This emerges from Samil Aledin’s doctoral thesis in the field of marketing, ‘Teenagers’ brand relationships in daily life – a qualitative study of brand meanings and their motivational ground among teenagers in Helsinki and London metropolitan areas. The doctoral thesis will be examined at Turku School of Economics on 22 May 2009.
In the research for his doctoral thesis, Samil Aledin studied the roles and functions of brands, by interviewing 12 young people from Helsinki and 12 from London, all aged between 13 and 15. He approached the topic by looking at what meanings the young people attach to their personal favourite brands and what motives lie behind the use of the brands.
People are often critical of marketing and brands targeted at young people, but these brands also support the everyday social interaction of young people. Brands act as guiding references, just like traffic signs, as teenagers move towards an independent life, says Samil Aledin.
Brands characterise
In his thesis, Aledin examines the brand relationships of teenagers by dividing their meanings between those that support the self (a notion of who and what a person is or wants to be) and those based on different group memberships. Teenagers use brands to express themselves, make an impact somewhere, raise their self-esteem, identify with others and to seek connectedness.
– Brands that are identified with meanings valued by a peer group, such as humorous, colourful and crazy, are used as a building material for identity and a tool for self-expression, either as a manifestation of individuality or a cornerstone of uniformity depending on the situation, says Aledin.
One part of the self-expression and social interaction of young people is to make an impact on others. Brands that are usually linked with style, trendiness, status and maturity were used when trying to make an impact on others. So-called designer brands that are identified with status and a certain feeling of superiority, such as Louis Vuitton, were particularly used by girls to raise their self-esteem.
The aspects of brand relations based on groups concerned interaction in social acceptance and rejection. The teenagers interviewed built up and expressed their egos by using the brands of members of their own group, and by avoiding those that might connect them with disliked groups.
– The brands of members the young people’s own group varied, but usually consisted of brands that were identified with youth and ‘coolness’, trendiness and status. On the other hand, certain status-symbol brands such as Burberry in the UK and a Miss Sixty in Finland were strongly identified with disliked ‘tribes’ of youth culture, such as ‘the Chavs’ and the ‘Piss-Lizzys’, as a result of which some young people ceased using the brands in question for fear of being 'branded’ as such. The own-label brands or so called “private labels” distributed by Tesco in the UK and Stockmann in Finland bore the stigma of ‘mummy’s boy’, and teenagers that used such brands were labelled as weird or under mummy’s thumb, says Aledin.
In their daily survival, and as a counterbalance to the status or designer brands that stir feelings of admiration or rejection, the young people favoured normal basic brands available to all and generally received as socially acceptable. As far as boys were concerned, sports and skateboarding brands were emphasised and for girls, inexpensive international fashion chains.
The doctoral thesis can be read at: http://info.tse.fi/julkaisut/vk/Ae4_2009.pdf
More information
Samil Aledin
+358 (0)50 596 7365, saali@welho.com