Barbie Doll Diversity

Dhruv Patel
MKT. 301

Wosk, Julie, “The New Diversity in Barbie Dolls: Radical Change or More of the same?” in the Huffington post.

I. Introduction

1. In today’s time the demographic of America is becoming rapidly diverse. Within the last few months, Mattel came out with a new line of diverse Barbie dolls which come in four different body types, 22 eye colors, seven different skin tones, different face shapes, and 24 hair styles. Mattel has chosen to focus on the growing diverse youth market to expand their existing product line to a new market. Mattel’s target market includes diverse children, but more importantly the parents of those kids. Mattel wants to target the parents to buy the Barbie’s for their children to help them realize everyone is beautiful in their own way and being beautiful doesn’t mean you have to look like a stereotypical Barbie doll. Mattel’s strategy to target the parents is to make them believe that buying their new Barbie’s will increase their children’s self-esteem.

2. Terms: Market offerings- are some combination of products, services, information,
or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or want; Market segmentation- refers to dividing the markets into segments of customers; Integrated marketing program- is a comprehensive plan that communicates and delivers the intended value to chosen customers; Product/market expansion grid- looks at new products, existing products, new markets, and existing markets for company growth opportunities; Marketing research- is the systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data relevant to a specific marketing situation facing an organization.

3. Mattel introduced its diverse Barbie dolls as a market offering to help fulfill the demand of diverse Barbie’s (chapter 1, 30). They used market segmentation to focus on the parents of diverse kids to sell the dolls (chapter 1, 24). Mattel advertised the Barbie’s as a way to improve the self-esteem of young girls through an integrated marketing program (chapter 1, 22). The new Barbie dolls were an expansion of an existing product to a new market (chapter 18, 512). Mattel’s market research showed that their current Barbie line was creating low self-esteem in diverse girls and parents were looking for more natural looking dolls for their kids (chapter 4, 130).

II. Marketing Environment

1.
Social Forces: Mattel stresses the importance of social-cultural environment with their new diverse Barbie doll line. Mattel’s purpose of creating the new Barbie line was to create Barbie’s that children can play with and boost their self-esteem with dolls that look like normal girls. Children often look up to Barbie dolls and want to be just like them because they look flawless. Young kids think that they need to look just like the Barbie they grew up playing with in order to be considered beautiful. Mattel has realized that the Barbie’s create self-esteem issues because of this and they used their new diverse dolls to help combat this issue. Mattel wants to be socially responsible so that kids grow up knowing that they are all unique and gorgeous in their own way. With the feedback from parents, Mattel has defiantly helped achieve the goal of boosting the self-esteem of little
girls. 2. Economic Environment: Not Discussed in Article. (Own research) Mattel has competitively priced their new dolls at the same price point of their pervious Barbie’s at $9.99 and they are selling quickly. The customer purchasing power seems to be reacting well with this price point. Mattel has also beaten their competitors by offering a high quality doll priced well below them.

3. Technological Environment: Technology helped Mattel tremendously creating the new line of dolls. In order for Mattel to produce and design such a large amount of dolls they had to pick from thousands of combinations of different hair, skin, eye, and lip colors as well as body structure. With the help of technology they were able to affordably research which doll design would be best marketable to the kids and parents. Mattel didn’t stop using technology after designing the dolls, they used it to create videos on their new website to promote their new line. They created videos to help demonstrate the purpose behind the new dolls and their mission. They also used the comments from their videos and website to hear feedback to see how their customers were reacting to the dolls and make improvements.

4. Competitive Environment: Mattel isn’t the only doll manufacture nor is it the only one to sell dolls of diverse skin color and sizes. Mattel has a few competitors that are selling similar dolls. This direct competition is something Mattel sees as a threat to their sales. Mattel’s indirect competition isn’t something that they see a huge problem with this doll line. While Mattel has direct competition they also have a competitive advantage over them in terms of market share, price point, customer base, and the infrastructure to mass-produce and get their dolls to retail. Mattel is a well-known company with many loyal customers that dominates this category and offers their diverse dolls at a price that their competitors can’t. Unlike many of their direct competitors Mattel already has existing shelf space in many famous retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Amazon to help their customers conveniently buy their products whether it be online or a physical store.

5. Regulatory Environment: Not Discussed in Article. (Own research) Mattel had to make sure their new Barbie dolls were safe for children to play with and free from risk of injuring the children. To comply with the Child Protection Act (1966), which bans the sale of hazardous toys and sets standards for child resistant packaging, Mattel made sure the dolls didn’t create any choking hazards by making the detachable Barbie head big enough so it cant be swallowed. They also made sure their dolls and packaging was free from any toxic chemicals so kids don’t get sick if they put the dolls in their mouth.

III. Marketing Mix Variables

1. Target Market- Barbie dolls are typically made for girl’s ages of three to 11. However, children can’t buy the dolls by themselves so they rely on their parents or gifts. Mattel’s marketers recognized this and picked adults and parents as their target market. Parents and adults are the main buyers of toys for children and gifts, which makes this demographic attractive for Mattel.

2. Product- Mattel sells thousands of different products, but to combat the issue of lack of diverse dolls Mattel focused on their own Barbie line to solve this problem. Mattel used their existing product line to create product adaptation to cater to the demand of diverse dolls. They made changes to its product through design, features, and even named the new diverse dolls as Fashionista Barbie dolls.

3. Price- Mattel’s new Barbie’s are competitively priced and very affordable. They kept the price the same as pervious dolls using uniform pricing. Mattel wants every kid to feel secure about themselves and offering the dolls at an affordable price shows that Mattel wants to create sustaining long-term relationships with parents and kids. They want the kids to buy diverse dolls for their children when they grow older.

4. Promotion- The promotion of Mattel’s Fashionista dolls was mainly communicated through word of mouth from parents and Mattel’s website where they created inspiring videos about their Fashionista dolls.

5. Distribution- The distribution strategy for Mattel was to allow customers to pick from a variety of diverse dolls and buy it, in the most convenient way possible. Mattel made their dolls easy to access through numerous online retailers and brick and mortar locations.