Youth and young adults: Developments in mobile technologies, alcohol marketing, and drinking cultures.
The integration of smartphones, coupled with the changing face of alcohol marketing, influences and changes youth and young adult drinking cultures. A range of resources/features are now carried in the pockets of young drinkers including: social networking sites; applications; camera; and traditional calling or SMS features. These features also represent a trove of predictive user data, conveniently time stamped and geolocationally tagged, for alcohol marketers to utilise. “Just in time marketing” (Wood & Ball, 2013) combines this with increased access to the consumer, marketing immediately relevant material directly to their pockets.
One focus of my research seeks to show how youth and young adults have adopted smartphones into their drinking cultures and what this means for individuals within these cultures. It will consider users’ motivations, norms, and behaviour surrounding interacting with or creating alcohol related material.
A second focus of the research considers the extent of mobile marketing present in youth and young adult drinking cultures. It will address the practices of marketers and the means by which they integrate into the drinking cultures under examination.