Youth as Potential Consumers - Essay Example

Children are a vital component of any society. I think that they are also young and vulnerable. If children happen to begin using a certain product, then they are likely to continue to use this product for the rest of their lives because they have so many more years to live than adults do. Accordingly, marketers can see the potential opportunities that arise from the commercialization of young children. This has always been the case, even if it is only now starting to show in these modern times.

Ever since the 1930s, the youth market has attempted to be reached. It took a whole 50 years before youth were first taken seriously as potential consumers. The three major ideals that changed it were deregulation, character licensing, and a new approach to market segmentation.1 The 1980s was a decade of great change in so many different ways. The debate over the regulation of the media industry during the previous decade helped open up the possibility of children becoming consumers. Opponents claimed that children’s advertising was deceptive since kids could not possibly understand the hidden meanings of what was being marketed to them.

2 Others argued that the government had no right to impose restrictions on what was acceptable in the marketplace. What eventuated was self-regulation, which broadcasters slowly let diminish over the years. Once this process had taken place in the United States, it was only inevitable that it would prevail in Canada too.