Youth groups are essential to soft drinks market

According to Datamonitor's new report, "Targeting Soft Drinks to Youths," , the potential of the youth soft drinks market is huge; US teenagers now consume twice as much carbonates as milk whereas the opposite was true in the late 1970s.

While this trend may be more pronounced in the US than in other countries, it is being replicated to some extent across the developed world.

With children drinking around 200 litres of soft drinks per head in the UK alone, soft drinks manufacturers are increasingly focusing marketing effort on attracting the younger generation.

Datamonitor examined youth consumption of soft drinks across seven European countries and the US.

They found that consumption across the three youth age groups generally favours carbonates, bottled water, juices and squashes & cordials in this order.

In addition, youth consumers are of primary importance to powdered drinks, squashes & cordials, carbonates and juices categories.

Children and tweenagers prefer powdered drinks and squashes & cordials, whereas carbonates and energy & sports drinks are more popular amongst teenagers.

"Greater consumer sophistication and the ability to influence parental purchase decisions raise the importance of developing specific marketing strategies for youths.

The recent furore surrounding the health claims of Sunny Delight highlighted the complexities of marketing one product to both children and parents.

Being positioned as a vitamin-enriched juice and placed in the chiller to emphasise freshness was a successful ground-breaking move.

Faced with increasingly sophisticated parent purchasers, however, meant that the brand's health claims were rapidly exposed as being somewhat overstated.

P&G were right, however, in trying to please parents as well as children," comments Neil Broome, Datamonitor drinks industry analyst.

Whilst the child/youth market's share of the overall population base may be shrinking, its importance to the drinks industry will not do the same.

Children are increasing consumption of soft drinks, sometimes at exceptional rates.

Manufacturers need to juggle maximising pester power with gaining parental endorsement.

This will be key in managing brand equity to ensure that brand loyalty can be retained as youths grow into adults.

However, targeting the message to attract both parents and children is only half the battle.

Segmenting the "youth of today" is something manufacturers and retailers need to take to a whole new level as marketing to the youth market as a single, homogenous consumer group is no longer a relevant approach.

Increasingly sophisticated children are displaying widely differing characteristics between age groups.

Children aged from 3 to 9 years old, tweenagers aged from 10 to 13 years old and teenagers aged from 14 to 17 years old all have very different attributes, and how each group inter-relates with parents in purchase decisions is also quite different.

Analysis from Datamonitor's WIN (Worldwide Innovations Network) reveals that, in the soft drinks market, orange and apple are the key flavours for new product launches, both for products targeted specifically at youths and in the overall category.

Strawberry is a popular flavour for new products targeting youths, but less common in soft drinks for non-youth groups.

In contrast, lemon, lime and grapefruit are for products targeted to the overall group rather than to the youth group.

Cola is prominent among youth specific new products, accounting for 7 per cent of products targeted at youths, in comparison to only 4 per cent overall.

Raspberry is considered to hold universal appeal, accounting for 6 per cent of youth targeted launches and 5 per cent of all launches.

More details on the report can be found on Datamonitor 's web site.