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New Parents/New Children
Trends in the Young Children's Market
Russ BERRIE and Company joined forces with PromoStyl to develop and present
its loyal customers with an exclusive guide to marketing trends for the
year 2000. This article is an adaptation of that presentation.
By studying the evolution of the young children's market, juvenile product
retailers can find elements that could help them improve their competitiveness.
In the market of 0-5 year olds, competition with imports is very strong
and the birth rate is dropping in most of the western world. So it is
crucial to understand today's new needs and how to answer them more efficiently.
We studied lifestyle trends in several countries and confirmed that we
are currently living in a period of mutation in the lifestyles of young
parents that brings with it changes in behavior.
Many retailers have what we feel is a false notion that prices have
to be the lowest in town to get customer to keep coming back. They match
discounted prices to the point of losing money, set their prices to less
than their discounting competitors, sell below cost just to keep a sale.
We feel quite the contrary; that consumers are shopping for value of which
price is only one component of. If a store can provide the other intangible
components of value, such as selection, a clean, well lit, fun place to
shop, guidance, that the store is performing some community service, and
a liberal return policy, then the price never becomes an issue in the
impulse to buy. These, we feel are the components of customer service.
We can't forget that new parents today who are between 25 and 35 have
already experienced various consumer phenomena. They have lived with the
music, sports, and advertising images that symbolize our modern world.
These parents have new needs and different desires, which will affect
what they want to buy.
Another change in today's family dynamic is the increased presence of
the father and his involvement in child rearing. This is a direct result
of the entry of women into the work sector and the desire of new fathers
to redefine their role within the family unit. Advertising agencies, known
for their reliance on behavioral studies, have begun to use this trend
in ad campaigns for baby products.
Grandparents still remain involved in the care of children as in the
past, but these baby boomer grandparents have a younger mentality and
envision their role in a whole new, dynamic way. In reality, our family-oriented
society has completely changed in the past few years. We speak of splintered
families, of recomposed families, of one-parent families; in short, the
"traditional" family begins to be an exception. And this phenomenon is
so widespread that family movies refer to divorce more often and many
books portray the diverse possibilities of what a family unit can be.
We have selected five fundamental attitudes which will help us to develop
new concepts in product and marketing to provide for ever evolving needs.
1. Mobility: young children are moving more during the course of the day
and sharing in adult activities.
2. Autonomy: the small child today has more autonomy at an earlier age.
3. Respect: this stems from several new schools of child psychology.
4. The idea of celebrations and parties responds to a feeling of optimism,
playfulness and the desire to spend time together as a family.
5. Today's generation can be called the cosmic generation. Young children
are growing up in a time of rapid expansion in terms of information, technology,
knowledge, travel and an increasingly borderless world. These are the
adults of the future. They will give us a lot of ideas to be used to develop
new concepts.
The children we are speaking of are between 0 and 5 years. Evidently
they don't all have the same needs in terms of products.
- The baby from 0 to 1 year we call "unique" because he is loved, protected,
and is his parents' new precious gift.
- From 1 to 3, the child is an explorer. He will begin to explore the
world around him and test its limits. He begins to express his individuality
and through this process will begin to learn.
- In contrast, the child between 3 and 5 years of age begins to have
a much clearer vision of what she wants and especially what she doesn't
want ... and she's the one who decides, more and more.
These new attitudes will be adapted to each age segment according to
their needs. We will now explore these 5 new attitudes of parents and
children and examples of new products that answer these new needs.
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