A Retailer's Disrespect for Teens

382 Words2 Pages
Retailers do not respect teens, but reel them into buying their products with appealing advertising, using celebrities to sell the product, and even resort to making the teens feel bad about themselves to buy the product. Even during this economic crisis, retailers with “in” or “cool” clothing are still thriving more than stores with great deals because teens are still willing to spend their money freely and are convinced by advertisements to buy more expensive clothing because it's “cool”. (http://retailindustry.about.com/od/retailbestpractices/a/retailindustry_article1.htm) Advertisements are what catch the teen's attention and reels them into buying a certain product. Because of this, companies are spending millions of dollars to perfect their approaches to advertising. Brands like Dooney and Bourke and Covergirl Cosmetics feature celebrities as their spokes models to appeal and relate to teens. Others are featuring celebrities' own designs. Wal-Mart now has a line of sun dresses designed by country singer Taylor Swift for their Spring 2009 collections. The companies know which celebrities teens like and admire, so they intentionally hire them to be the face of their product. (http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2008/04/capturing_teens.html) Another technique retailers use to attract teens to their company involves using inappropriate themes to sell their product. More and more teen stores are resorting to using sex as a theme in advertisements for the product. Brands such as Abercrombie and Fitch, Calvin Klein, and Dolce and Gabbana are notorious for their racy ads that focus more on sex than the actual product being sold. This technique, however, gives these companies an advantage because teens are attracted to such things. While parents may find it inappropriate, teens are more than willing to buy a product that is displayed with a sexual theme.
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