February 2003 - Nr. 2
German Youths Have Become Key Consumer Group
TWIG - German teenagers are an increasingly attractive consumer group, with a combined annual purchasing power of 7.5 billion euros, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. According to a recent survey by the Munich-based Institute for Youth Research (Institut für Jugendforschung), German parents give their 13- to 17-year-old offspring an average of 40 euros a month in pocket money, for a combined total of 2.3 billion euros a year. One-third of all teenagers also have after-school jobs that pay an extra 90 euros a month. Added to this is income from apprenticeships and the more than 2 billion euros a year young people in Germany receive for their birthdays, for Christmas or from their grandparents. On the whole, German teenagers take in an average 1,440 euros each per year.
However, most are relatively modest spenders. Two-thirds of today’s German teens sock away part of their money in savings accounts. Their combined savings are estimated at 5.5 billion euros. One in ten German teenagers has debts, albeit no more than an average 70 euros, mostly owed to family and friends. A typical reason is astronomical mobile phone bills, which set back German youths a total 70 million euros a month. That figure is still 230 million euros less than what they fork out for clothes and shoes, although many youths are clever enough to get their parents to pay for such items. Ninety percent of survey respondents said they do not buy blindly, but generally pay attention to price-performance ratios. Not surprisingly, more than two-thirds admit to buying in line with the latest trends.
