College students, like other young consumers, are notoriously fickle and may not exactly seem like an ideal candidate for loyalty marketing. But there are at least two things that make college students hard to ignore for many businesses. First, college kids are usually at the cutting edge of technology and fashion trends. After all, two of the major online players today, Google and Facebook, had sprung from university campuses. This makes college students important trendsetters to watch. Second, although college kids may not be rich today and some may even have concerns paying for their education, they do tend to spend more (a good 40%) on discretionary items such as fashion and entertainment. They are also well on their way to joining the educated professional workforce in a few years. So for some businesses, college students represent valuable customers right now, and for many others, these students are potentially valuable customers in the near future.
Because of this, it is important for loyalty marketers to get into the mind of college students. Recently, I conducted a brief survey of 184 college students. Similar to an earlier study I did on adult consumers, the purpose of this survey was to understand college students’ online social activities and their consumption and sharing of online content. Some findings from this survey were expected, while a few surprising facts also emerged. Here are some highlights.