Search results

To explore mothers’ attitudes to fast food companies’ use of toy premiums as a marketing technique.

Two focus groups and 12 individual interviews were conducted with 21 mothers of young children.

The mothers considered toy premiums to be a highly effective form of marketing targeted at their children. Such purchase incentives stimulate a constant barrage of requests that parents must manage.

If parents are to successfully perform their role of food providers to address escalating rates of childhood obesity, they need assistance to counter‐balance the highly effective forms of marketing being employed by fast food companies.

The findings have relevance for public policy makers in their efforts to assess the impacts of various promotional activities targeted at children. They are also useful for food marketers as they suggest how product offerings may be differentiated to better meet parents’ preferences.

Very little research has examined parents’ attitudes to specific marketing techniques aimed at children. Understanding the impacts of these techniques on parents’ feeding practices is critical in obtaining an appreciation for how parents can better manage their children’s diets to address rapidly escalating rates of childhood obesity.

Describes the types of toys needed by children of different developmental stages, their appeal for the parent, and the marketing implications. Outlines the developmental stages from infants to pre‐teens. Discusses toys for children with special needs, family games, toy collecting, and safety and care issues. Focuses on a research approach to discovering what toys meet these requirements; this is based on observational research and a pen‐and‐paper survey, and establishes a composite “Toy Tips” rating based on fun rating (always the most important toy factor), plus other development scores for thinking skills, character development, social skills and motor skills.

Recalls the hot toys phenomenon of several past Christmases in the USA, such as for Cabbage Patch dolls and Power Rangers. Argues that such toys created headlines in order to gain publicity, but also that this trend appears to have died because of eBay: what made toys hot and a cultural event was their inaccessibility, but eBay makes them all accessible for those willing to pay the price. Continues with how toys have changed: the old barriers between adults’ real objects (like trains) and children’s toy objects (toy trains) no longer applies to computers and iPods, and instead of toy versions there are simpler versions of, for instance camcorders, which nevertheless work. Shows how companies now know how to design products which make children feel part of the adult world but are also appropriate to their ages: examples are the “Chat Now” closed‐system walkie talkie with cellphone features, and mobile phones with parental controls. Concludes with how adults too enjoy working toys like iPods: not only are there KGOY (Kids Getting Older Younger) but ANGU (Adults Not Growing Up).

Reports the Duracell survey of favourite toy purchases in nine European countries, and how it is conducted. Lists and comments on the top 10 toys Europe‐wide: Tecnitoys’ SCX Monza Set, Smoby’s Star Party CD, Smoby’s No.1 football table, Zapf Creation’s My Model, Game Boy Advance SP, Smoby’s Ma Palette Beaute, Konami’s Battle Accel, LEGO Dirt Crusher, Geomag Panels 220pcs, and Giochi Preziosi’s Robosapiens. Moves on to findings from the qualitative research conducted with children and parents: playing with toys remains the favourite leisure activity, pocket money normally starts at six years old, 58 per cent of children save money from gifts, children attend an average of eight birthday parties a year and spend 13 Euros on the host’s present, Toys “R” Us is their favourite toy store, and they receive an average of seven toys at Christmas and four or five on their birthday.

Explains recent attitude research by toy manufacturer Mattel into the need states and drivers of mothers with young children, and the impact of this on toy ownership. Outlines the changes in family life and how this affects attitudes to, and purchase of, toys: mothers often return to work relatively soon after having children, they welcome advice on parenting from their own mothers, family and friends, and they are concerned with the balance between protecting their children and fear of spoiling them. Looks at mothers’ attitudes to child rearing and development, and the role of toys in aiding this; working mums with less time to spend with their children tended to have and consider essential a wider range of toy types than did non‐working mothers, and books were seen as the most essential toy.

This paper aims to examine the optimal sourcing strategies and pricing decisions of competing toy manufacturers and to discuss how manufacturers’ decisions are impacted by competition.

The authors consider a single-period model to characterise the competition between two competing toy manufacturers. Both of them are free to choose between virgin material and recycled material. The authors consider two types of consumers: sensitive consumers who are concerned about product safety and prefer the toy made of virgin material and insensitive consumers who do not care what material is used in the toy. The competing manufacturers play a Cournot competition.

The results reveal a special case of a win-win situation for both the manufacturer and the consumer. In addition, an increasing number of sensitive consumers does not always raise the price of virgin-material toys.

The authors derive the manufacturer’s equilibrium sourcing strategies, corresponding market-clearing prices and profits obtained.

The paper investigates how toy manufacturers’ optimal sourcing strategies are impacted by competition, considering market segments.

The aim of this study is to investigate and analyze product recalls and product-harm crises in the US toy industry, which is a major area in marketing and firms' competitiveness.

By using longitudinal data from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the paper uses content analysis to compare and contrast toy recalls, product hazards and country of origin issues of 721 toy recalls in the US market between 1974 and 2008, covering 270 million recalled toys.

Findings of this work reveal that most of the recalled toys were manufactured in China, although a wide variety of toy brands were designed in the USA. Major hazards of toy recalls included choking, lead poisoning, aspiration, fire/burn and other injuries.

The study relied on the CPSC's data that seemed representative of the toy industry in the US market, but missed other markets of Europe and Asia. Also, there was availability of detailed data in sub-categories of the toy industry.

The paper provides useful academic and managerial implications that can help us understand the issues of product recalls and product-harm crises.

Toys are one of the most widely available products in the world; the industry is a $50 billion industry and has transformed itself from a small-scale business sector into a well-established industry.

This investigation is particularly important in the areas of firm-specific competitiveness, business ethics and regulatory and societal issues.

The purpose of this paper is to understand, from children's perspectives, the commercial marketing strategy of selling breakfast cereals with “insert toys” targeted at children.

The study is based on four focus group interviews conducted with 16 children (8‐9 years of age) concerning 18 different breakfast cereal packages. The theoretical framework integrates childhood sociology, critical discourse analysis and talk‐in‐interaction. This theoretical and methodological combination is used to show how children, in local micro settings of talk, make use of the discourses that are available to them to produce and reproduce social and cultural values about marketing with “insert toys”.

The present findings suggest that, from children's perspectives, “insert toys” are constituted by cultural and social patterns extending far beyond the “insert toy” itself. For example, the analysis shows that it is not biological age that defines what and how consumption is understood.

The focus group material provides understandings of marketing strategies and consumption practices from children's perspectives. When the children talk about children and adults, hybrid agents of the “child‐adult”, the “adult‐child” and the “childish child” are constructed. These hybrids contradict research that dichotomizes children and adults likewise children's understandings of consumption based on age stages. Accordingly, age is rationalized into an empirically investigated category rather than being used as a preset category set out to explain children's behaviours.

Analysis of the focus group interactions shows that the way the market and marketing as well as children and adults are talked about is crucial to understanding children's and parents' actions as consumers.

Presents research into materialistic values among Chinese children, in the context of Chinese culture and rapid economic growth, contrasting materialistic values with both communistic and Confucian values. Reviews the literature, which shows that children understand the concepts of possession and value from a very young age, and also shows the importance of collectivist values in Chinese advertising. Outlines the research method, which involved interviews with 15 students at a Beijing elementary school, and asked them to respond to pictures of children with and without new and expensive toys and games. Finds that there was a surprising negative attitudes to possessions: children with fewer possessions were perceived to have more friends, whereas those with lots of “cool stuff” would look down on other children; this type of attitude was present even among the younger children, who were naturally more egocentric, and other negative attitudes were that owning lots of toys was wasteful and would have an adverse effect on academic achievement. Concludes that Chinese society and parents both appear to discourage materialistic values, and makes suggestions for further research and for marketing campaigns.

Innovative products usually experience highly unpredictable and variable demand. This is especially valid for the volatile and seasonal toy industry, which produces high obsolete inventory, lost sales and markdown. In such a volatile industry, what supply chain management (SCM) practices are applicable and effective? This study seeks to explore SCM practices, and identify practical and theoretical gaps in toy supply chains.

This article includes a longitudinal and in‐depth case study during the past year in an international toy manufacturer, which includes qualitative semi‐structured interviews and questionnaire with 11 main European toy retailers.

The study concludes that there are three main SCM practices for toy retailers in terms of ordering behaviours (one‐off, JIT, and mixed model), and one dominated SCM practice for toy manufacturers (traditional mass‐production or push‐models). These low‐responsive practices in the toy supply chain are not caused only by slow knowledge diffusion. SCM know‐how is not yet capable of managing such levels of volatility and seasonality. Therefore, explanations of these theoretical gaps and what new theories are required for such extreme volatility and seasonality are proposed.

It reveals actual SCM practices in a volatile and seasonal supply chain, such that theoretical and practical gaps are identified. Also, it proposes a model to match manufacturing SCM‐practices with retailer SCM‐practices.