Piper Jaffray Companies, an investment bank and asset management firm, completed its 34rd semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens research survey, which highlights spending trends and brand preferences amongst 6,100 teens across 44 U.S. states. Among the findings: 82% of teens expect their next phone to be an iPhone, which is up from 81% in spring 2017, and more importantly, the highest ever seen in the survey.
Other findings:
- Snapchat is the preferred social media platform for 47% of teens using the platform – up 12% year-over-year.
- Teens who expect >50% of their future video games to be digitally downloaded increased to 50% from 45% in spring 2017 and 37% from two years ago.
- Streaming continues to gain teen video share as preference for linear TV declined 2% since last fall.
- Only 35% of teens listen to Pandora radio versus 49% last year as on-demand services such as Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music continue to gain share.
- Twenty-three percent of teens prefer to shop specialty retailers, which is down 3% year-over-year, while pure-play e-com tied its spring 2017 peak at 17% – up 2% year-over-year.
- Teens increasingly prefer Amazon as their favorite website at 49% share – up 9% year-over-year.
- Overall teen spending moved down 4.4% year-over-year, while parent contribution to teen spend is 67% just below the long-term average of 68%.
- Wallet shifts in fall 2017 include slight downtick for video games, slight uptick for clothing, and moderate downtick for food.
- Food ticked down from 24% in spring 2017 to 22% in fall 2017, but remains larger than clothing at 20%.
Since the project began in 2001, Piper Jaffray has surveyed more than 155,000 teens and collected nearly 40 million data points on teen spending in fashion, beauty and personal care, digital media, food, gaming and entertainment.
