As
living conditions improve and individual familiy incomes increase, the amount
of money that is spent on buying toys for children also sky-rockets. Hence, in
regions such as Europe, children's toys means "big business". This has
led to the existence of some very strong companies such as Mattel (holding such
brands as Fisher-Price and Barbie) and Lego (the core business of which is plastic
bricks that children can put together in order to build things). Moreover, companies
such as Disney generate substantial incomes by means of licensing (i.e., letting
other companies use Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, etc., on products such as games,
clothes, foods, etc). The demand for toys has also led to the establishment of
a series of newer, strong brands (e.g., Bratz dolls, PlayStation and X-box) that
are affiliated with new lines of toy products. To most of these companies, a key
competence has been their ability to develop and sell toy products that target
different genders and age groups. Thus, many of these companies have based their
product development activities on thorough knowledge of children's life cycles
and the ways in which stages hereof make children want different sorts of products.
For example, Mattel's Fisher-Price products are aimed at small children, whereas
the Barbie doll targets girls who are 4 or 5 years old and above. Furthermore,
most of these companies' product development activities have been characterized
by the continuous launch of new products. Especially the toy industry is well-known
for launching more expensive products around points in time when gift-giving is
institutionalized, e.g., when Christmas is celebrated in European countries. Thus,
institutions like European Christmas are peak seasons for toy sales. As a result,
toy retailers and the large supermarket chains send out toy catalogs, in which
1 or 2 pages are dedicated to each of the strong toy brands and the presentation
of their new products.
In the same way, most strong brands and the latest products
launched under these brands are heavily advertised on TV during these months.
Research shows that the catalogs are used extensively by children and are decisive
for children's listing of wishes. Also, research on parents indicates that the
TV commercials give rise to extreme degrees of pestering during this period of
time. Most of the catalogs are ordered by age and gender so that one section focuses
on small children (age group 0-4) and the rest of the sections are dedicated to
girls and boys (often subdivided into the age groups 5-8 and 9-13). As for the
TV commercials, these are shown in patterns that align with the kind of programs
that are shown. For example, commercials for special brands would often be found
just before or after a cartoon that tells stories about the characters affiliated
with the brand. It can be rightly inferred that toy companies have thus been extremely
professional with respect to segmentation and targeting based on thorough understanding
of children's life cycles and the ways in which stages of this life cycle make
different kinds of toys attractive to these different segments.
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