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Michael Brenner
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Girl Power:  Teen Girls Spend More Than Boys

ICR Teen Survey Highlights Buying Power and Source of Income

Media , Pennsylvania , August 15, 2005A recent study conducted by ICR indicates that teenage girls report outspending their male counterparts.

Teenage girls (12 to 17 years old) report spending $47 per week vs. $45 per week for boys.  And where do they get their money?  Most of the time, (87%) teenage girls get their spending money from their parents vs. 77% of boys.  A higher number of teenage boys (25%) cite regular or part-time jobs as the source of their income.  But this gap is closing fast with 22% of girls also reporting that they have a regular or part-time job the smallest gap in reported source of spending money in 5 years.

The current generation of teenage girls has tremendous buying power, says Melissa Herrmann, EVP and Business Leader of ICRs Teen Research Group.  The evidence is starting to show up in the numbers but we have seen this in qualitative studies for the past few years.

Other Key Findings:

- More teenage boys (73% vs. 65%) get money from odd jobs and the gap has grown in the last 5 years.

- Teen Boys are more likely to get an allowance (40%) than teen Girls (36%)

- Older teens (15 to 17 years of age) spend $59 per week vs. $46 per week for their younger counterparts (12-14 years of age).  But this gap has narrowed over the last 5 years.

The ICR TeenEXCEL study was conducted by telephone from March 16 to July 20, 2005, among a nationally representative sample of 1,366 teenagers ages 12 to 17. The margin of error is +/- 2.65 percent.

To access the full survey results or to learn more about ICR, please visit www.icrsurvey.com

ICR, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Media , Pennsylvania , is a top-ranked and nationally recognized market research organization in the business-to-business and consumer markets. Through its research in the U.S. and over 70 countries worldwide, ICR provides consulting and research insights to its clients on a wide range of issues including branding, market segmentation, customer and employee satisfaction, loyalty, advertising, public relations, multicultural and ethnic marketing, social science, public policy, and many others.

The family of ICR omnibus services, which includes EXCEL, TeenEXCEL, SmallBizEXCEL, HispanicEXCEL and ICR CENTRIS, interviews more than 150,000 adults, 6,000 teenagers, 12,000 Hispanics and 6,000 small business owners and operators annually. Many of ICRs clients publish their research several times per month in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, ABCNews.com and others.

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