Scarborough Enters the Youth/Teen Research Market with New Internet Panel

NEW YORK, April 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Scarborough Research announced today that it is expanding its consumer and media research services to include custom studies for youth and teen markets via a new Internet panel. The company has launched the Scarborough Kids Internet Panel, or "SKIP." The new custom research service gives marketers and media professionals customized insights into the consumer behaviors of children ages 5-17.

"Modern kids have more influences in their lives than ever before. New social networking experiences and technologies as well as more traditional factors such as parents and established media are affecting their decisions," said Bob Cohen, president and CEO of Scarborough Research. "When you add up these various influence and interactivity factors, you can see that today's young people are a challenging group to understand and connect with -- they are highly mobile and complex marketing targets. Marketing efforts need to be equally sophisticated in order to have meaningful impact, and the SKIP service helps create this impact by going beyond standard measurements to give marketers customized insight."

SKIP utilizes a nationally representative Internet panel of approximately 75,000 children and their parents. The panel also features regional analysis capabilities, so marketers can get a local perspective of teen/youth behaviors if desired.

"SKIP was added to our suite of Custom Research services based on marketplace demand, as our clients are seeking youth and teen insights that will help them develop more effective marketing," said Steve Seraita, executive vice president of sales, Scarborough Research. "Two key benefits of SKIP include the ability to create regional profiles, as well as the potential to ascertain youth insights without having to make the investment required to create a custom study from scratch."

SKIP enables marketers and media professionals to field custom surveys to the panel of youths and teens on product usage, brand awareness, shopping patterns, advertising effectiveness, or any other topic of relevance to marketing and media strategies. All panelists have been previously profiled on a variety of attributes, such as demographics and technology usage, so targets for the custom study can be prescreened to identify specific segments. This enables the marketer to create and field customized re-contact panel studies that identify and cost-effectively reach specific segments.

Panelists are invited to participate in the online survey via email. Those under the age of 13 have their parent(s) copied on the invitation. Fully compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), panelists are recruited via advertising on various websites, as well as via word-of-mouth.

SKIP respondents are given incentives to complete the online surveys. They can earn points by completing survey questionnaires, and then redeem these for merchandise online. Parental approval is needed before any merchandise is shipped.

For more information, please contact Karla Horton at info@scarborough.com or 443.259.7593.

About Scarborough Research

Scarborough Research (www.scarborough.com, info@scarborough.com) measures the lifestyle and shopping patterns, media behaviors and demographics of American consumers, and is considered the authority on local market research. Scarborough's core syndicated consumer insight studies in 81 Top-Tier Markets and its Multi-Market Study are Media Rating Council (MRC) accredited. Other products and services include Scarborough USA+ (a national database), Mid-Tier Local Market Studies, Hispanic Studies and Custom Research Solutions. Scarborough measures 2,000 consumer categories and serves a broad client base that includes marketers, advertising agencies, print and electronic media (broadcast and cable television, radio stations), sports teams and leagues and out-of-home media companies. Surveying more than 220,000 adults annually, Scarborough is a joint venture between Arbitron Inc. (www.arbitron.com) and The Nielsen Company (www.nielsen.com).