How Role Models Affect Teenagers

Young adults that often pay attention to trends utilize social media to find what is advertised in the newest products, fashions, and services. A better understanding of how role models influence teenagers can aid organizations and their advertising teams to target and communicate more to this budding market. Relation to celebrities. Sports and sports celebrities are major keys to today’s media culture. Sports celebrities have been role models for years, and with the advancement of technology, it seems that famous and infamous athletes are all over the place. In the past years, advertisers have given famous athletes monetary rewards for endorsing their products. Sports celebrities’ endorsements have ranged from using brands to discussing personal experience with the brand. Some examples are Michael Jordan being endorsed by Nike and Gatorade and Shaquille O’Neal being endorsed by Burger King and Radio Shack.

Generation Y, individuals born between the years 1977 and 1994, are one of the most important target markets for advertisers because they exhibit astounding potential while also facing considerable challenges. Pokrywczynksi and Wolburg pointed out that the youth market is one of the greatest of the groups due to their ability to begin trends, their power of spending, their potential for becoming lifelong customers, and their interest of new products. It is argued that the youth are an easier target market due to them growing up in a consumer-oriented society.

Consumer socialization is defined as how young people gain skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are relative to their role as consumers. It also emphasizes the sources of influence, referred to as “socialization agents”, that convey attitudes, norms, behaviors, and motivations to the learner. Socialization agents can be people or organizations that are related to an individual directly. Some of these socialization agents that are often used in literature are peers, parents, mass media, television viewing, and school.

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Role models are anyone that have potential to influence the decision of a consumer. A very important part of sports marketing is the usual celebrity athlete representative. There have been some theoretical reasons for the use of celebrity spokespeople. Some suggest that celebrity endorsers are influential due to their dynamic and their striking and likable qualities. On the other hand, others suggest that celebrity spokespeople can give value to a product from their physical attractiveness and their athletic status. It was also theorized that celebrity endorsers had the ability to transfer cultural meaning from the athlete to the products that they advertised. It’s hypothesized that celebrity athletes act as socialization agents in the Generation Y consumer socialization process.

There are studies that have found that mass media sources greatly impact young adults. Roles such as athletes, entertainers, and more have been known to influence these young adults. It was also reported that media is on of the most important factors for influencing young adults. It was also found that celebrity sports athletes provide positive influence on young adults’ brand loyalty. Sports sociology is known as the tie between society and sports. It observes how values and culture each have an impact on sports and vice versa. It also shows how sports can be related to things such as the media, religion, race, politics, gender, economics, and youth. Sports sociology also determines the link between sports and social mobility as well as social 00000000 inequality.

Many who study sports sociology also have knowledge of the role that media plays in revealing biases. For example, there is often different viewership of various sports by gender. Typically, basketball, hockey, football, baseball, professional wrestling, and boxing are viewed by men. On the other hand, gymnastics, skiing, figure skating, and diving are often watched by women. Also, men’s sports are usually covered more often than women’s sports, whether it be in print or on television.

Social media can often act as a catalyst for success by pushing people and boosting their ideas. In a study provided by Navigate Research, sports fans were 67% more likely to utilize Twitter to greaten their viewing experience as compared to non-sports fans. In 2013, 50% of Tweets that were relative to television in the United States, about 492 million of those Tweets were related to sports events. According to Nielsen, these events comprised 12 of the Top 20 Most-Tweeted-About TV broadcasts of the year. About every sports event or broadcast comes with a hashtag that is displayed on the television screen or at the event. These hashtags are used to engage the audience and create a relationship between them. In some instances, fans commented on different ways that athletes’ actions could change their fans’ perspectives of them. Some athletes and athletic groups have also used Twitter to interact with fans, other teams, and other team members.

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