Posted Jun 1, 2015, 8:36 PM UTC
What is wrong with this? a vast, VAST, majority of boys like action figures over dolls and stuffed animals, and a VAST majority of girls like dolls over RC monster trucks. it is a business after all.
So does pretty much every store everywhere. Sad but true.
The suggested brands are also different, offering brands like Disney Frozen, Barbie, My Little Pony, and Monster High to girls, and brands like Hot Wheels, Lego, Minecraft, Star Wars, Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to boys.
As sad as it is and kids should play with what they want to play with, I'm sure a lot of the structure and featured brands are assembled based on market testing. If they see more activity or sufficient activity and revenue being generated from their current method they have little incentive to change. They might throw out some testing every once in a while, to check if other methods result in more sales, but this method has probably survived a good chunk of testing to get where it is today. I would be interested to see the sales as a result of people searching exactly what they want versus using the navigation they set up. Though I would hazard a guess that if it's sorted by gender the sales resulting from searches would probably be not as significant as people saying my niece/nephew is a girl/boy so I'll look for toys that other girls/boys like to play with.
As a guy who had... ok... has a ton of stuffed animals, that's a pretty dorky categorization system.
They do that with clothes, too....
So? I know some girls like the action figures and vehicles and some boys like the stuffed animals, but is it really all that big of a deal if a retailer organizes their website menus based on what most genders tend to like?
I sort of think that the reason genders gravitate towards certain toys is because of systems like these. I always loved playing with all of the above toys, and I think kids shouldn't be made to feel different if they want to play with a toy outside their gender norm.
I agree there's nothing wrong with targeted marketing, but there are only three categories different between the two, so I feel like they could have easily just made the categories the same, and the brands are so obviously different they could at least diversify them a little bit.
Yeah, I used to think that too but after having raised seven kids I don't think that any more. I'm convinced there is a physiological difference. I.e., it's not just nurture it's nature.