Retailing: The Teen-Age Tide

The coolest customers in the U.S. these days are the nation's teenagers, who number 22 million and are growing as a group three times faster than the total population. Today's teen-ager seems less excited by his new Impala or Honda and his closetful of clothes than his father was about a new baseball glove. The real excitement is coming from the merchants, the admen and the market researchers, who are just beginning to realize fully the enormous potential that faces them. Teen-agers now have an income of about $12 billion a year—and...