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With 2012 on the horizon, we're pleased to present our annual Youth Macro Trends, Predictions & Insights report for the coming year as well as revisit a handful of trends and predictions from last year's report to see how they have played out over the course of this year. Rather than providing an exhaustive list of rather meaningless trends, our main objective is to provide a select number of actionable views that have multiple implications across various industries and product categories.

As the mega important holiday shopping season begins in earnest, we're noting a rather subtle yet consistent sense of confidence among college students. Hopefully, this sense of confidence and optimism isn't short lived. Black Friday, which at this point, might as well be considered a one-day holiday, was another huge draw for students this year. Nearly seven in ten panelists (68%) surveyed in this month's Insights Immersion reported hitting the malls and stores on Black Friday compared to about 64% last year. This equates to approximately 5.5 million college students nationally.

If we had to use just one word to describe the climate surrounding this year's back to school shopping season, we would use the word restraint. This is not to say that all of the air is out of the balloon, but it wouldn't hurt if it was propped up a bit. It's restraint, mainly in the form of moderation that's the big story for back to school this year. This year, students and their parents plan to spend an average of $608 on back to school-related purchases, representative of a 10% decrease compared to last year.

The Teen Lifestyle report is conducted on annual basis. Findings for the Summer '10 wave of Teen Lifestyle were based on in-person interviews conducted the week of September 6, 2010 with a total of 1,208 respondents between the ages of 17 and 17. The respondent base was representative by age, gender, grade in school, ethnicity and geographic location based on the National Center For Education Statistics.

Social Media Marketing In 2011

Millions of college students returned home for Thanksgiving break last week to celebrate the holiday with family and friends. Besides filling up on turkey and stuffing, catching up on the latest hometown gossip, and perhaps even watching a football game or two, a record number of students did something different this year: they went shopping on Black Friday. This lead up brings us to our macro shopping theme for Holiday 2010 and this year's key theme is one of excitement and fun for the audience.

Talk about a paradigm shift. In years past Halloween was a one day holiday where most of the nation's youngest members-mainly kids and tweens, would dress up for their school parade and go trick or treating after school. More recently, we've observed a significant "trickle up" effect as millions of college students have embraced some of the main tenets of Halloween and augmented some other elements by putting their own unique spin on the holiday. When all is said and done, the Halloween holiday has fast become one of the highlights of the fall semester.

Did someone say challenged economy? Based on the findings of this year's Back To School Retail & Shopping Report, it appears as if the majority of teens and college students (and their parents) weren't listening or they decided to play the role of the contrarian. This year students and their parents plan to spend an average of $669 on back to school-related purchases compared to $614 last year.

Spring & Summer Fashion & Style is one of five Shopper Insights supplements supporting the core Youth Trends Lifestyle research portfolio. Findings for the Spring & Summer 2010 wave of Fashion & Style were based online interviews conducted the week of March 22, 2010. Interviews were conducted with 1,000 members of the Youth Trends College Shopper Insights panel. To qualify for participation, respondents shopped for clothes, accessories and/or footwear at least three times during the most recent three-month period.

Excerpt: Spring Break 2010 Awaits--After two relatively weak Spring Break travel seasons, 2010 looks to be a renaissance year for the near rite of passage for college students around the country. Based on the findings from the latest Insights Immersion, we attribute the marked shift in behavior to a series of factors. For starters, there is a palpable sense of pent up demand, especially among seasoned student travelers that didn't take a trip last spring or perhaps even during their most recent summer break.