Beyond Age: Market Context, Perceived Value, Social Influence, and Product Category in Young Consumers' Brand Choice

This review examines how young consumers choose brands by moving beyond explanations that rely mainly on age. Existing studies treat young consumers as an important market segment, but age alone does not explain why the effect of loyalty is stronger in some product categories than in others. This paper argues that young consumers' brand choice is shaped by three main mechanisms: market and information context, perceived value, and social influence. Market and information context influences what brands consumers notice and encounter. Perceived value explains how consumers judge price, quality, usefulness, and risk. Social influence explains how family, peers, online reviews, and user-generated content shape brand meaning and purchase decisions. The review also argues that product category acts as a boundary condition: routine products, visible identity products, and high-risk information-intensive products activate different decision mechanisms. The paper ends with a framework and future research directions that link consumer behavior to business analytics, including segmentation, prediction, and recommendation systems.