JediMom Blog

If you’ve strolled a mall recently, you likely encountered a number of stores with pastel overload. Inside you’ll find display racks and aisles jammed full of everything from Hannah Montana room decor to jewelry, cosmetics and hair accessories. Many of the items in these stores cost just a few dollars — conveniently in the price range of the average pre-teen’s allowance.

Taking my daughter shopping to spend her allowance has led to some nice mommy-daughter time. She might think I’m lame, but she’s not quite confident enough to shop by herself yet. I’ve bitten my tongue just a few times about some of her choices. I console myself with the knowledge that I’ve worked in a few teachable moments about budgeting, saving and the concept of sales tax. But I’m begining to fear my exposure to Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana and High School Musical has reached near lethal levels.

I do find this system a bit ironic. Parents fuel this industry by providing their tweens with allowance. Tweens spend their parents’ money on relatively cheap, heavily-branded products. At least one survey put tween spending at $40 billion. Power shops in this category include Claire’s, Justice for Girls/Limited Too and Libby Lu.

Tween Brands which owns Limited Too and Justice for Girls announced plans in August to rebrand 600 Limited Too stores as Justice for Girls. Justice is the discount brand in the group. So perhaps a recession will pinch this market too.

But honestly, I’d give up my lattes before I’d stop bribing rewarding my daughter with allowance.

What do you think? Is allowance the ultimate in parental leverage? Do you give your tween guidance on how to spend their allowance or let them learn those life lessons?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Marketing to Girls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.