>> Massive Youth Study

Apr 11, 2007

Habbo Youth Survey A few weeks ago we posted a conversation with the lovely Emmi Kuusikko of Habbo, the virtual world for teens. If you don’t know much about Habbo, click here for Wikipedia’s writeup

During our chat, Emmi mentioned a big youth study which has now been published. Emmi was kind enough to send us a review copy, and we thought we’d share a few bits…

LARGE: The study is very large, particularly for such an under-researched and valued audience: over 42,000 teen respondents (most aged 12-16) across 22 countries, interviewed in May 2006
COMMUNITY: This scale is a testament to the power of good community-building – research panels could learn a lesson or two from them. For example, “They [the community] tend to treat Habbo staff members and moderators as celebrities, often creating rooms in their honour and sending them gifts at Christmas and Easter.”
REPRESENTATIVENESS: The sample isn’t necessarily perfectly representative of all teens, but then again what sample ever is? As Emmi explained to me, “…teens with certain areas of interest, values and attitudes are more likely to use Habbo, and some groups of teens are probably not interested in Habbo at all. In some countries they are probably quite representative, but in others less so – for example in Brazil, the Habbo users are most likely from much wealthier families than the average teens and thus are not representative of Brazilian teens in general.” (ED: this is typical for many studies in Brazil, not just among teens)
COVERAGE: Topic coverage is wide – media and brand choices etc., with an average questionnaire completion time of 33 mins
SEGMENTATION: Part of the analysis includes a five-cluster segmentation based on the dimensions of attitude and social confidence (see chart below). In the global analysis the segments are of similar size but of course there are country differences (e.g. developed countries have a higher % of Achievers, Rebels more prominent in southern Europe and Loners in Japan)
BRANDS: Found it interesting that Sony is way ahead of Apple in the favourite brand stakes. As Emmi notes, “…in this age group, the Playstation seems to be way more popular than the iPod.”