Assignment: Advertising and Marketing

Assignment: Advertising and Marketing

Assignment: Advertising and Marketing

Order an original top nursing paper. Get writing help with your paper: Assignment: Advertising and Marketing

They put on makeup and write in their diaries. They all go to Monster High together,” Grace replied.

On the next trip to Target, Grace spotted a display of Monster High dolls in one of the aisles and shrieked, “Mom, can I have one, pleeeeeease?”

Grace’s mom checked the price, weighed this struggle against all the others she might encounter that day, and reluctantly put one of the $21.99 dolls into the shopping cart. Along with millions of other parents, she caved in to what has been called the “nag factor” in the world of advertising. As it turns out, Grace’s mom got away pretty cheaply that day. Anyone searching Amazon.com can find 517 different toy products and apparel items associated with Monster High dolls. Children and their parents can purchase, for example, sundry dolls and accessories, a Monster High roadster and scooter for the dolls, a high school doll playhouse, wide-ruled notebooks, pencil sets, nail polish, hairclips, and even a digital video recorder (see Figure 2.1). And all of this is marketed without the typical TV cartoon series! Instead, Mattel has created a financially successful brand that is now sold in 35 countries—all based on a website, a few TV specials on Nickelodeon, a set of videos on YouTube, and a chapter book series. A full-length movie titled Monster High: Ghouls Rule was released on DVD in late 2012, coinciding with Halloween.

It is estimated that more than $17 billion a year is now spent on

http://Amazon.com

advertising and marketing to children (Lagorio, 2009), representing almost three times the amount spent just 20 years ago (McNeal, 1999). Marketers are paying more attention to young consumers these days for at least three reasons. First, American children today have a great deal of their own money to spend. Consumers younger than age 12 spent $2.2 billion in 1968; roughly 35 years later, this amount had risen dramatically to $42 billion (McNeal, 2007). As seen in Figure 2.2, children’s spending power has steadily risen over the years. Much of this increase comes from children earning more money for household chores and receiving more money from relatives on holidays (McNeal, 1998). As might be expected, teens spend even more than children—teens spent roughly $200 billion in the year 2011 alone (Business Wire, 2011). In fact, the average American teenager spends nearly $100 a week on such products as clothes, candy, soft drinks, and music (Teenage Research Unlimited, 2004)

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