Shopping with Friends and Teens’ Susceptibility to Peer Influence Executive Summary The teen market is a substantial and increasingly important retail segment, not only because of the current spending of teens, but also because the teen consumers of today will become the adult retail customers of the future. Thus, not only may understanding the retail behaviors and attitudes of teen consumers result in short-term increases in retail performance, but such understanding may also result in long-term competitive advantages, to the extent that teens are effectively targeted and courted by retailers.

Although many retailers have recognized the benefit of targeting the teen segment, there is some evidence that teens do not hold particularly positive attitudes toward retailers. Traditionally many retailers have viewed teen consumers as "inconveniences" who may adversely impact security and operations, particularly when groups of teenagers "hang out" at the mall and in their stores. However, research on adult consumers indicates that, when adults shop with friends, this co-shopping has certain advantages for retailers, namely that co-shopping adults tend to spend more time in stores, cover more of the store’s area, and spend more money. Given that such positive effects have been found for co-shopping adults, it seems likely that shopping with friends would be even more important and relevant for teens and, thus, also have a significant and positive impact on retail performance. This is because peer groups are a particularly strong source of influence in the teenage years.

The purpose of this study, then, was to examine how the social influence of friends might be related to teens’ retailing attitudes and behaviors. Our basic premise was that teens’ evaluations of retailing are an output of a social comparison process with co-oriented others. Specifically, we proposed that shopping with co-oriented friends provides teens with information and normative standards by which teens may evaluate retailing phenomena. This susceptibility to interpersonal influence from friends, then, shapes the construction of retailing attitudes and behaviors, such as frequency and enjoyment of shopping with friends, teens’ sentiments toward retailing, and their spending tendencies.

To test these ideas, we collected data from high-school students via a survey design. The pattern of findings generally supported our research premise. In particular, susceptibility to interpersonal influence from friends was significantly related to teens’ enjoyment and frequency of shopping with friends, which, in turn, were generally related to sentiments toward retailing and spending tendencies. However, the pattern of findings suggests that informational influence may be a more important basis in shaping retailing attitudes and behaviors, while normative influence from friends is not and may even have negative effects. Our finding that teens’ susceptibility to informational influence from friends has more impact on shopping attitudes and behaviors than does normative influence is consistent with results from other studies indicating that people are more influenced by the information that groups provide rather than by group pressures to conform. It appears that teens are more susceptible to friends’ informational influence, which, in turn, affects teens’ retailing attitudes and behaviors.

Thus, while retailers may discourage teen groups from shopping together because it is thought that such groups may cause trouble or be more likely to shoplift, our results indicate that teens’ shopping with friends offers potential benefits to retailers. Specifically teens who shop with friends and who enjoy co-shopping are likely to spend more money with those friends than they do alone and to have more positive sentiments toward retailing in general. Thus, rather than discouraging teen groups from shopping in their stores, our results imply that retailers should encourage teens to shop with friends. Perhaps "bring a friend with you" promotions, special events, and other techniques could be used to encourage more teen group shopping. Not only may there be short-term gains in profitability by doing so, but retailers who actively court teen co-shoppers may create long-term positive sentiments toward their stores. Finally, given the powerful role that information plays in teen co-shopping, retailers may wish to consider ways to educate and deliver information to teen consumers. Given that teens report that they are susceptible to informational influence from friends, it would seem to be prudent for retailers to evaluate and seek to provide accurate information to teens. Perhaps features in teen- related media designed to educate and inform teen consumers could be sponsored by retailers. At the very least, retailers may wish to monitor and evaluate the retailer-related information that teens possess.