Tween Beat

In his widely hailed research on child-age consumers, author and Texas A&M University marketing professor James McNeal points out that there's not one but three different children's markets. First and foremost, there's the market created by kids' direct spending. Second, there's the market stemming from kids' influence over their family's purchases. Finally, there's the market of the future--that is, courting kids to eventually become loyal adult consumers. With so much at stake, it's easy to see why so many eyes are on the tween-age kids of the baby boomers. They are the present; they are also the future.

And they aren't an easy sell. But maybe it helps for entrepreneurs to remain somewhat young at heart themselves. "I'm probably the perfect person for this business," enthuses Ch!ckaboom's Dennis, a loyal viewer of the hip TV shows Dawson's Creek and Felicity. "I'm a perpetual [kid] myself."

This article was originally published in the September 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Tween Beat.