Question 3 Choose a brand where its core product is primarily for kids e.g.

The Wiggles, Thomas and Friends, Hello Kitty etc. Write a paper on how it has diffused throughout the product categories and how it has extended to other categories as well. Do a case study of its success (or failure) and how it has changed the landscape of product innovations. For example, Thomas and friends has clothes, stationery, household products, jewellery etc. *** She is a successful independent woman, who lives in a world of pink, where she owns a dream house in Malibu. Every day, she wears high-heels to work, and even runs a fashion chain under her name. For many, she was the influential icon of American culture in the late 20th century. Until now, I dare say that her image is still very potent worldwide. Who is she? Never before has she ever starred in a Hollywood movie or performed at a famous fashion show. Surprisingly, she never exists in real life and she is literally a toy. Yes, it can hardly be any other toy but Barbie. Nowadays, girls can be seen wearing Barbie clothing, using Barbie perfume, carrying Barbie backpacks, and sleeping in Barbie pajamas, not to mention cosmetics, sneakers etc. (Morgenson 1991, 66). Mattel, Inc., the mother company of Barbie, should feel proud of her. Because on average, an American girl has ten Barbie dolls, a British or Italian girl may own seven, while five is the number of Barbie that a German or French girl has. It was Mattels purpose and will when introducing Barbie that she would become a lifestyle, a fashion statement, a way of life, something sacred more than just a doll. And in fact, she did! This plastic doll is worth being considered a legend, which can represent many statuses in the society regardless of gender, skin colour or classes, thus remaining attractive to different girls generations since its year of birth. Barbie did not stop at being a widespread phenomenon, but soon became a cultural icon, which holds societal values, beliefs, and norms in it. Barbie appealed to not only young girls, but also to doll collectors, designers, those keen on fantasy, or simply fashion lovers. She even had fan clubs with flesh and blood fans (Roger 1999, 6).

It all started when Ruth Handler founder of Mattel happened to see her daughter and her friends mimic adult conversations through playing with paper dolls. Barbie came to consumer world for the purpose of becoming the grown up image of children at that time, helping them make sense of the adult world. Playing with Barbie allows children to imagine themselves being future adults, and might shape their developing self-concept through familiarizing themselves with stereotyped scripts (Smedt 2006, 7). Barbie and cultural aspects: The ideal beauty concept In the 1990s, the ideal concepts of beauty were akin to Barbie, namely: tall, young, skinny, blond hair, blue eyes, Caucasian, and large breast (Smedt 2006, 7). Although Mattel has been making effort in adapting Barbie to the fast-changing roles of modern women, the ideal beauty concept is not something that remains forever. These days, people often base on societal expectations in assessing an ideal beauty (Solomon 2009, 222). Barbie may be an air hostess in the 1960s, an astronaut in 1986, Dr Barbie in 1988, or a swimming champion of Sydney Olympic Games in 2000; as a matter of fact, she was still blonde-haired and blueeyed when not all the girls over the world have that look. She still resembled the so-called stereotype of old days women, while nowadays girls and women are heading for a future, where they would choose to pursue their own career and do not need dolls to provide them with examples. It is also the future, where the social view on ideal beauty is broader and much more open (Warner 2005, 161). Grasping such marketplace trend, MGA Entertainment released Bratz dolls in 2001, which were described as dolls with personality, attitude, and as representatives of new girls generation. Meanwhile, Mattel did not acknowledge that threat from its competitor and turned the focus from the core product Barbie to new digital toys and games, which was not its strength. Until sales dropped 30%, this giant manufacturer introduced My Scene, Barbie dolls debuting together with perfume, cosmetics to aim at older girls segment. However, My Scene was found to be an imitation of the Bratz dolls and soon flopped (Hope 2011). This refers to the process of selective retention. According to Kotler & Keller (2009, 204), consumers may keep in mind positive features about a certain product they like and tend to ignore the good things of a competing product. Barbie and cultural aspects: Diffusion and failure

Originating from the concept that different ethnic groups can have their very own stereotyped ideals of beauty, in a strategy of expanding the global reach of Barbie line to different cultures, Mattel came up with multi-cultural Barbie, i.e. Barbie with different backgrounds, for instance: the coloured Barbie was warmly greeted in African, American, Hispanic, and Indian cultures. However, there was controversy over approaches of Mattel in other markets, of which cultures traditional Barbie dolls were not compatible with. Drawbacks were clearly seen in Mattels business in several overseas markets, to name but a few, ban on Barbie in Malaysia due to its lack of Asian appearance; Barbie confistication in Iran because of its nonIslamic features (Ferrell 2007, 484), which go against their religion in terms of womens image; Barbie rejection in China, a country of high national pride, because it did not represent Chinese culture; Russian people blamed Barbie for promoting a promiscuous style among adolescents; and Japanese parents had bad impression on Barbies large breast and did not approve of buying the doll for their children. Nonetheless, this giant manufacturer has been maintaining the strategy of strong expansion overseas (Ferrell 2007, 483). Barbie in China Take a closer look at the case of Barbies approach in China. For the purpose of building brand awareness to Chinese consumers, Mattel poured 30 million dollar to a showy Barbie Dream House in Shanghai, including spa, museum, restaurant, Barbie bar with alcoholic beverages, and luxury boutique (Mattel, Inc. 2009), where young girls can have make-up in Barbie style and enjoy her favourite food. However, this retail theming (Solomon 2009, 384) did not seem to work effectively, despite the fact that Mattels Barbie is well recognized throughout the global market, it is perceived very differently in all cultures. To be specific, the Barbie phenomenon seems to be a relatively new concept to the parents in China, and Mattels experiment in a Chinese context seemed to stumble on the obstacle of cultural differences. A six-story glamorous store equipped with staircase full of dolls could not succeed in persuading consumers with low levels of income to throw big sum of money at a doll. A consumers behavior is likely to be under the influence of personal characteristics including consumers age and stage in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, personality, self-concept, lifestyle and values (Kotler & Keller 2009, 196). Mattels failure on Chinese market demonstrated in the incompatibility with characteristics of the target consumers (Kotler & Keller 2009, 196), for example: young Chinese women are prone to

choose cute designs instead of sexy clothes displayed in the store. In terms of shopping habit, a study of McKinsey in 2010 showed that Chinese consumers are pointed out to be among the worlds most pragmatic ones. In their buying decision making process, they spend months on researching products, mostly on the Internet and are driven a lot by word-of-mouth recommendations. For them, shop visits are mainly for research rather than for purchase. Sam Mulligan, director of market research company DDMA stated that many consumers in Shanghai consider shops to be showrooms (Chris Hogg 2011). Another factor contributing to this failure is that Barbie doll was introduced in the age of limited Internet development. Nowadays, the popularity of Internet along with tremendous technological advances have caused rapid changes to consumers taste (China is not Barbies Home 2011). The internet gives people more options and reduces the loyalty to a certain product. As a matter of fact, consumers are likely to find similar and cheaper substitutes through the Internet. In addition, Kotler and Keller (2009, 197) stated that economic circumstances have enormous impact on consumer buying behavior, and income is among the most typical factors affecting the type of products and services consumers would choose. In this case, luxurious Barbie products offered in the store may be the desire of many consumers but the price may turn out to be unaffordable to some of them. Besides, consumers tend to acknowledge a strong relationship between price and quality of products (Evans et al. 1996, 284). While Chinese consumers spend money with deliberation and carefulness, they would rather choose products that are worth the money they spend (Chris Hogg 2011). Expanding in non-toy areas Since 2002, Barbie lost its position in the list of five best-selling dolls. The trend that children these days are leaving tangible toys at earlier age and prone to be appealed to technological toys like Wii, PSP etc., forced Mattel to expand the Barbie line into the field of technology, a category in which this toy manufacturer later proved to bring no success. The first technological failure of Mattel can be traced back to the summer of 1999, when the idea that stylish and colourful computer would have the potential to make profit (Michael Kanellos 2000). Patriot Computers hit on an idea of special computers for children; accordingly, Patriot contracted with Hot Wheels and Barbie to produce a boys-targeted blue PC with racing car imagery and a Barbie PC decorated with pink and purple, plus a flowery pattern to attract girls (Janelle Brown 1999). Unfortunately, both of these products failed in appealing to children or the parents because assumption of girlish features putting on a traditionally boy

product does not mean it would sell well among young girls. (Justine Cassel, professor at the MIT Media Lab and co-author of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat). This idea was supposed to resort to gender stereotype. Nevertheless, Mattel still wanted to try its luck at expanding into non-toy areas by introducing interactive software and Mattels CD-ROM software. Failure chains continued with the wrong choice of merging with The Learning Company, which had been already experiencing problem before the catastrophic acquisition. In addition, Mattel has been positioned in consumers mind as a toy manufacturer with good brand equity since 1945, not a technology company; hence, it was very likely that consumers might cast doubt on its technology product line. As a consequence, those Mattel-branded technology products proved to be unsuccessful in the marketplace leading to losses of $184 million (Ferrell 2007, 480) The Barbie Wireless Video Camcorder released in 2002 is another proof of Mattels inability to keep up with and maintain technological advances, despite the products affordability and user-friendliness. Movie cameras have long been viewed as masculine things (Kearney 2010). The Barbie camcorder was a symbol of feminized filmmaking technology, a technological device made specifically for girl, which incorporated some girlish features, especially the colour pink of Barbie (Kearney 2010). However, as seen in the case of Barbie PC, this camcorder fell in the trap of stereotyped assumptions about girls aesthetic values. In addition, Mattels instruction suggested girls to use the camcorder to play at pop star or fashion model, without mentioning cinematographer, which implied that girls place in the media was supposed to be under the cameras gaze (Kearney 2010). This was supposed to relate to culture expectations of how girls should act (Solomon 2009, 205). With the Barbie camcorder, despite Mattels attempt to pave the way for female access to a masculine device, the toy manufacturer seemed to lack of compromising traditional feminine behaviour and appearance (Gill 2007). Unfortunately, this product was discontinued only a few years after its debut.

Conclusion Despite significant failures in its development history, it is undeniable that Mattel has attained much success with the Barbie line. In the current context, maintaining attention of the primary market and satisfying new evolving demands are the tasks ahead. Mattel should learn from mistakes to be able to carry out effective innovations to its existing product lines therefore gaining product acceptance from other cultures. In addition, careful market research

would play a determinant role in helping Mattel avoid repeating previous failures. Although the success of Barbie in the past is undeniable, Mattel should consider reapproaching technological market perhaps by merging with successful technology partners. In this fast paced world, it is very necessary for Mattel to create new toy lines in order to satisfy new evolving demands. Lets hope that Mattels Barbie will continue to remain as young girls lovely pinky friend, as an important puzzle piece that contributes to complete their beautiful childhood picture.

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