When you look at some products from companies like WinkBed, The Allswell, Nectar Mattress, Layla Mattress, Brooklyn Bedding Signature, Zoma Sports Mattress, Bear Original, Satva, Awara, Birch-Helix, Puffy, Cocoon etc. you can see a pattern of sorts. Most of the new set of offerings are specially oriented towards needs like more cooling, support for side sleepers, sports players, more comfort and space.
Back home in India, too, we have seen SleepX with an interesting NotInMyBed campaign. There is also Nilkamal with a brand Doctor Dreams, targeted towards the millennial digital-savvy audience. And there is Duroflex catering to the comfort needs of millennials, with its LiveIn mattress.
Clearly, players are eyeing for a nascent, but prolific market that is hitting new hormones recently. The India mattress market is expected to touch $2.5 billion (Rs 18,300 crore) industry by 2022 (as per a report from RedSeer Management Consulting). Of which, the branded mattress market could easily command 37.5 percent of the market by 2022. Now teenagers are manifesting as a major segment that the branded category could lean towards. This trend has gathered force, depth and pace in the recent times. Is it random or is there a strong undercurrent that marketers need to pay attention to?
The teens – A slippery rope to the top
Youth in the age bracket of 13 to 19 bring in a new power and clout to this industry. Their spending habits, lifestyle, health orientation and lifecycle value as a customer are very different, and attractive, when compared to other customer segments.
Brand Management Expert Gaurav Gulati explains the trajectory and reasons of this emerging segment’s growth. “The adolescent market is growing to be a robust and significant consumer market all over the world. There was a time when teen buyers purchased items for personal use only. Their purchasing abilities were limited to products for personal use, such as clothing, accessories, gadgets, etc.
Teen shoppers
However, the coronavirus pandemic has altered adolescent purchasing habits. Teens are increasingly shopping for household items, including everything from mattresses to groceries.”
The implications are strong too. “Teens are critical components of any marketing campaign. These teenagers are also trendsetters, an attribute that has been influenced by their increasing purchasing power. They have always had the power of their voice, but now they also have the power of their wallet. And they clearly know how and what they want to spend their money on.”
Another aspect worth noting in his reckoning is that they are also highly technologically savvy. “They are at ease with the latest gadgets and are aware of the most recent modes of communication available in the virtual world, such as social networking, blogs, and so on. Simply put, if brands genuinely want to cater to this market, they must develop youth-centric strategies.”
They are also prominent as ‘digital natives’. They constitute a major part of the Generation Z. It is quite consequential a category when you look at the staggeringly-huge purchasing power it wields – almost $44 billion annually. Mind you, the Gen Z was estimated a considerably-large 2.56 billion population by 2020. Most of them owned smartphones (98 percent), learn about new products through social media (85 percent) and spend around 10 hours of screen time on devices each day – as per some latest figures. According to e-marketer too, the lockdown led to a significant uptick in the amount of time people were spending online daily. Not surprisingly, the highest leap was observed in the 18-to-24 age group – it saw a 53-minute increase from the start of the year (January) to full lockdown (April).
They are supposed to make up 40 percent of U.S. consumers when they grow up. But they have an attention span of 8 seconds and 51 percent of this population uses ad-blocking software. That means getting their attention pays, but it’s not that easy.
In other words, their power is huge. But they are also hard to woo. They know a lot. They learn a lot every day, from their peers and digital communities. They are aware and concerned about issues like human rights, health and environmental responsibility.
Hard nut to crack? Or easy?
Their unique psychological and behavioural profile explains why marketers spend so much effort and bucks on innovative ways to approach teenagers:
- Influencer marketing
- Digital media vehicles instead of TV and billboards
- Content-heavy marketing
- Tech-enabled shopping support
Turns out, the marketing strategy for teenagers would hinge a lot on creative and disruptive ideas. ExAmerican Eagle, is a teen brand, found huge success with a virtual store on Snapchat. This was launched for the holiday season. In the first five weeks, the store generated more than 41 million impressions from customers. These people booked nearly $2 million in sales, according to some analysts. There is also the instance of how Burger King introduced a virtual home on a social media platform. It gave away free episodes of the Fox shows ’24,’ ‘Pinks,’ and ‘First Friend.’ Similarly, other brands in many categories have started fiddling with free content, games, merchandise, immersive shopping and music-based approaches.
Like Burger King’s online channel Diddy TV (with rapper P. Diddy) or webisodes called ‘Instant Def’ with the musical band ‘Black Eyed Peas’ that the Mars candy company used to promote Snickers bars to teens. Or like the ‘White Cup’ campaign by Starbucks. Brands have also used game-vertising in various ways as seen with campaigns from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC.
Translate this for mattresses
Dr. Veena Tripathi, Associate Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Management Studies & Research; and who has, incidentally, done an interesting thesis PH.D on the subject observes that both teenagers and tweens are a huge market opportunity for sure. “Their influence in family is growing. Their choices about colours, design etc. are also becoming strong due to their rising sense of independence at this age.”
She explains that Teenage is a transition phase from childhood to adulthood. In this transition phase for a healthy growth and development of teenagers, high quality sleep has the heightened importance. “Harmonious and forty winks stimulate the brain & physical development, temper, academic accomplishment and neutralize negative ramifications of young adults. A right mattress plays a very crucial role in establishing a healthy sleep routine. The traditionally-adult-oriented-industries need to consider all these parameters in designing and manufacturing mattresses for teenagers.”
For a mattress player it can be hard to shake off the legacy of marketing and distributing products the old-school way. But if a brand wants to etch a special place in the minds of this special segment then it will have to think like them.
They may look fickle but they are not careless. They may have carefree attitudes about a lot of things but their brand loyalty, lifetime value and word-of-mouth/mouse’s reach is quite significant. Hence, it is better to not just devise marketing strategies but also product innovations and designs around the needs of this young customer.
As Dr. Veena Tripathi, consultant and also author of the book titled ‘Sovereign Marketing of Teenager’s in Modern Era’; and she advises that teenagers should be approached with smart and cautious routes of direct marketing personal selling. “They are very sharp in capturing the ‘they are trying to teach me’ tone of marketing. They are strong-willed in their opinions so would prefer not to be preached to. Teenagers are also highly cautious for their comfort, cooling and being organic while going for mattress. This opens a platform to have an understating on teenager’s decision making process.”
It is better to not just devise marketing strategies but also product innovations and designs around the needs of these young customers. Marketers would need to devise more effective strategies for this because this age is very unpredictable
She adds that Marketers need to demonstrate the consumer psychological and lifestyle characteristic approach in targeting teenagers as a segment. “Different sleeping positions and teenagers grow taller by day must be considered as major two factors while targeting this segment. The different sleeping positions could be back sleeper, side sleeper, stomach sleeper and several sitting positions such as cross leg, back support to spine play a major role in buying the mattress for teenagers. In developing countries, majority of consumer are priceoriented. While there are variety of options in quality of mattresses, marketers need to focus on promoting customized mattress to consumers. Marketers need to consider the mattress as an emotional support to attract young adults.”
Brand Management expert Gaurav Gulati recommends why marketers must alter their strategies to target teen buyers as well. “Marketers would need to devise more effective strategies for this. Failure to do so would result in a significant loss of a larger market in the economy. And the reason is simple: this age group is risk-taking and willing to try anything. If brands do not develop youthcentric strategies, they will abandon those brands.”
Whether they are studying, Netflixand-chilling or dreaming about changing the world – teenagers are doing it on a mattress. It better fit them. Coz the only thing sure about this age is that it is very-very unpredictable. And can turn any side.