Now they have one.
To determine how marketers could better establish inaugural brand relationships with this key demographic group, BurstMedia surveyed over 800 18 to 24 year-old college students concerning their media consumption, discretionary spending and what factors influence their brand preferences.
To begin with, college students spend more time with the Internet than any other media.
One-third (33.6%) of the students said they used the Internet for more than 10 hours during a typical week, and 20.3% said they did so for more than 20 hours.
Male college students are slightly more likely than female college students to be
heavy Internet users who spend more than 20 hours online per week (37.2% versus 29.8%, respectively).
Importantly, for marketers trying to reach them, today's college students do not consume radio and television at nearly the rate they do the Internet. Less than one in five said they spent more than 10 hours a week watching television (18.8%) or listening to the radio (18.2%).
These findings roughly corroborated a survey conducted earlier this year by Experience, an online career site for graduates, which showed that 43% of college students spent 10 hours or more online, compared to only 17% who watched television and 6% who listened to the radio 10 hours or more.
Of course the figures may be somewhat fuzzy due to the fact that BurstMedia found that nearly two-thirds (63.7%) of the students reported that they watch television while also using a computer, and 60.2% said they typically use a computer at the same time they are listening to the radio.
When it comes to the factors that are most important to college students when deciding what products to buy, they are quite like most other consumers. Better price was cited as the primary factor by 60.5% ofr the respondents, followed by a friend's recommendation (48.5%).
BurstMedia concluded that for the most part college students have fully integrated the Internet into their daily lives. For a significant proportion of them, the Internet is the primary communication vehicle, information source and entertainment channel — in short, the media of choice.
Today that is a fact that no marketer can afford to ignore.