Make drug stores 'teen-friendly' to reach that niche

Drug Store News, March 1, 1993 by Liz Parks

In our special report on the teenage market elsewhere in this issue, Drug Store News joined forces with |TEEN magazine and BKG Youth, the country's leading teen research and consultancy company, to do a little investigative reporting that the chain drug industry might find valuable.

In partnership with |TEEN, we gave a half dozen typical teens $100 to shop with and sent them to stores as diverse as CVS, Walgreens, Drug Emporium and Phar-Mor.

To learn what happened, please read the report which starts on page 13.

In the process of researching that report, we also picked up a lot of other interesting information about teens, one of the fastest growing niches in the consumer populations.

We learned that while the media do influence teen cosmetic and beauty care purchases, their influence is not as strong as you might think.

According to |TEEN, only 22 percent of girls between 12 and 15 said television most influenced their decision to buy a cosmetic, while 20 percent said magazines influenced their purchases. Only 7 percent said radio was an influence and 4 percent said newspapers. No wonder drug store executives think teens are such a hard market to reach.

Older teens are even less accessible through the media. Fourteen percent of girls age 16-19 said magazines influenced their cosmetic purchases the most, while just 12 percent said TV was an influence and only 5 and 4 percent said newspapers and radio, respectively.

If drug chains want to reach teens, they need to open new channels of communication, and probably the best approach would be to reach then through the neighborhood by making their stores "teen friendly."

Household shopping

It's also becoming more common for teens to have to do at least some shopping for their families.

According to the Rand Youth Poll, in 1981, 16 percent of teens said they rarely shopped for groceries. In 1991, just 10 percent said they rarely shopped. Clearly, as more mothers join the work force and single parent families become the norm, teens are taking on more, shopping responsibilities.

According to the poll, 47 percent of teens experiment freely with various items and brands. Twelve percent of teens say they buy anything they want. Only 20 percent follows shopping list with no changes unless absolutely necessary.

Of course, that means stores that merchandise to teens have a much greater chance of generating incremental impulse purchases.

That, of course, goes to the heart of why Drug Store News developed the Ten Market Basket Study.

Hopefully, armed with information about how teens shop and they buy, drug chains can go back to their marketing departments and whip together some new strategies to reach this market.

And the teens themselves have some advice for drug chains, like "Make drug stores more pleasant places to shop."

Many thought it would be nice if chains gave them extra incentives for shopping their stores like "Offer us a student or high school I.D. and when we use it, let the store take 10 percent off our purchase."