How Kids Toy Stores Play you like a Violin
What is it that you remember most about your Christmas shopping experience last year? If you spent much time hanging around kids toy stores to buy stuff for your kids, standing in line could be your one spectacular memory. When you go in on the last weekend before Christmas to shop for toys, and the whole store seems like a heaving mass of humanity, how frequently wonder why no one can come in during a weekday? Does everybody have to enter on a weekend just like you? There’s a reason why everyone gets in during the weekend and not during the week. When it refers toys that are in high demand, they just don’t have them in stock during the week. It is not that they are in short supply; the toy stores hide them in storage until the weekend arrives. Why on earth would they do such a thing? They feel that weekend shoppers have more money to spend an additional time to look around. They’re likely, they feel, to spend more money when they have a lot of time. They want the best toys out when people come within with a lot of time on their hands. What other fast ones are the kids toy stores trying to pull on you? Read on.
Toy makers and kids toy stores have to advertise their products in a way that will reach your kids.
If you have been holding your child away from unwholesome and repetitive TV and print advertising for toys, the toy makers know what you’re doing. They advertise to your child through school. Kids toy stores knew also that when a kid walks into one of their stores, they need to take full advantage of their ability to throw tantrums. A child is the best sales rep whom a toy’s store can have. Right at the entrance to any major toy store, they will have a huge attractive display to do with the latest movie that’s doing the circuit – a Harry Potter movie, the latest Toy Story or Shrek movie, and so forth. These are toys that give the store a pretty generous margin. They want to tackle the child, as soon as he enters the store so that the total time the kid is in the store with a parent, he will be pestering the parent for what he just saw at the entrance.
How precisely do you decide on what toy to get your child – if your child is too young to be influenced by advertising? Of course, you consider some magazine list of what the hot toys are. Did you ever think of how toys could be hot if they were really too new to have a real reputation, and if the children they were aimed at were too young to actually demand them? Those lists are prepared by industry groups. They look at what movies are coming out, they ask the manufacturers about everything they have projected for the holidays, and make a list to serve the toy manufacturers. Those lists have nothing to do with what will make your child happy. There are lots of toys that place themselves on those lists, and become popular just because they turn popular.
