Age-based Marketing Practices and Young People as Economic Actors in the Mobile Telephony Market in Provincial Vietnam

In this article, I conduct an analysis of age-based marketing strategies employed by<br/>network providers and present insights obtained from mobile phone history<br/>interviews with young people in provincial Vietnam. From these data I argue that<br/>young people are a perpetual demographic market frontier in the commercialized<br/>mobile media landscape of Southeast Asia. I indicate how network providers<br/>contribute to shaping contemporary childhood and youth with their age-based<br/>marketing strategies. However, young people’s navigation of the commercial terrain<br/>of competing network providers is not determined by commercial forces solely but is<br/>also informed by various non-economic factors. This article finds that an appreciation<br/>of young people as consumers in the mobile phone era requires appreciating the<br/>powerful influence of network providers as well as the multiple relationships in which<br/>their economic decision-making is embedded.

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