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What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids
If you're in the business of marketing or developing products and programs for kids, What Kids Buy and Why belongs in your office. How can you create outstanding products and programs that will win in the marketplace and in the hearts of kids and parents? Dan S. Acuff and Robert H. Reiher have invented a development and marketing process called Youth Market Systems that puts the needs, abilities, and interests of kids first. This system makes sure you won't miss the mark whether you're trying to reach young children or teens, boys or girls, or whether you're selling toys, sports equipment, snacks, school supplies, or software. Based on the latest child development research, What Kids Buy and Why is chock-full of provocative information about the cognitive, emotional, and social needs of each age group. This book tells you among other things?why 3-through-7-year-olds love things that transform, why 8-through-12-year-olds love to collect stuff, how the play patterns of boys and girls differ, and why kids of all ages love slapstick. What Kids Buy and Why is the result of Acuff and Reiher's almost twenty years of consulting with high-profile clients including Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Microsoft, Nestlé, Tyco, Disney, Pepsi, Warner Brothers, LucasFilm, Amblin/Spielberg, Mattel, Hasbro, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, General Mills, Broderbund, Bandai, Sega, ABC, CBS, I-HOP, Domino's, Hardee's, and Kellogg's. Special features include: an innovative matrix for speedy, accurate product analysis and program developmenta clear, step-by-step process for making decisions that increase your product's appeal to kidstools and techniques for creating characters that kids love Here is the complete one-stop tool for understanding what children of all ages want to buy.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
6 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Acuff
28 books3 followersDaniel Acuff Ph.D. is considered to be one of the leading experts on marketing to children and kid-attractive products, programs and characters in the world. He is the author of the foundational book: What Kids Buy and Why - the Psychology of Marketing to Children. As a consultant for more than twenty-five years, he has assisted more than fifty major corporations with their kid-targeted new products and programs and their marketing. Companies include such as: Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, Nickelodeon, ABC TV, Hallmark, Kellogg's, Kraft, Nestle and Marvel. He assisted M&M Mars in the creation of the M&M characters. Dr. Acuff is the author of ten books, four screenplays and hundreds of articles focusing on the likes and dislikes of children, kids, tweens and teens.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 30, 2021
The book provides an in-depth understanding of what is needed to succeed in the kid marketplace. In each chapter, we dive more and more into children's wants and needs through cases of studies and relevant research in the children's behavioral development field. The book also provides a canvas to create a concept of a product directed to your audience.
The book is quite old but compared with the most recent design for children's books its content is still relevant.
The book is quite old but compared with the most recent design for children's books its content is still relevant.
April 23, 2024
I appreciate that this book, written in the 90s and citing examples from Nintendo, Mattel, Warner Bros, and Lunchables, divides the target audience into age groups:
- Birth through Age 2
- Ages 3 through 7
- Ages 8 through 12
- Ages 13 through 15
- Ages 16 through 19
The writer, Daniel Acuff, also studies boy and girls separately, noting differences in both brain development and preferences in the two. He draws conclusions based on observations made in business under the name: Youth Market Systems Consulting and Character Lab, which conducts focus studies, surveys, and case studies of various popular phenomena through the 1990s, like the Power Rangers, Happy Meal toys, Nintendo Power, and Barbie.
However, the book contains too much fluff, inflated from an abundance of obvious matter-of-fact statements that anybody growing up in America during the 90s would already know: things like
- Girls prefer dolls while boys prefer action figures
- Babies’ brains aren’t yet fully developed enough to understand nuance in sarcasm or abstract concepts
- Kids reject childish characters like Barney as they grow older to seem cool among peers
- Girls’ brains develop earlier emotionally, making them more interested in relationships and role playing
- Boys have more testosterone, making them more inclined to action, like sports and violent games
- Children like animal characters, especially ones with human characteristics.
The book makes so many of these general, obvious statements that much of the book feels like wind: it doesn’t really educate or get me thinking about effective creation or marketing, but rather tries to explain why past franchises were successful. I don’t need a lecture or a retrospective view of why Power Rangers were popular among boys and girls in the 90s. Anyone can observe children and craft a story explaining why something was successful. I don’t need a PhD to trace the appeal of an old 90s toy or character. I also don’t need all the science of brain development, about which lobe is developing at what age. The author spends too much time pontificating about past successes and feigning scientific reasoning for marketplace hits like Teddy Rupxin or Cabbage Patch Kids.
Instead, readers need more guidance about actionable tasks, ways of creating or evaluating products early enough in the development cycle, ways to reach and pitch to parents, marketing tactics to raise awareness, to maximize the success of launch. The book lacks any kind of practical action plan, so it reads instead like an autopsy of 90s hits, rather than an instructive guide on product development, iteration, marketing, and sales.
A sample of the most useful quotes I highlighted:
Accumulating vs. Collecting: Before the age of approximately 6, children are interested in accumulating lots of toys or other fun objects just for the sheer number and mass that this represents. As they shift toward the more left-brain dominant, 8-through-12 stage, they develop the cognitive capacity to differentiate more precisely. This leads to what we term more serious collecting, which involves more comparison of details, more involvement with and attention to detail. (16)
Do we always give kids what they want? Let’s go to the extreme. If we put on pornographic TV programming after school, do you think children would watch it? We have no doubt that a great many would. Does this mean we should put it on the air—after all, "They want it"? Because older males prefer the most violent electronic games, does this mean we should provide them with ever-increasingly violent electronic-game programming? (20)
The Japanese have less of a societal problem with crime and violence than we do (at least so far). Why? The consensus is that it is a "psychocultural environment" issue; they have much tighter control than we do over the ethics and actions of individuals through strong societal moral influences and close-knit family structures. (22)
Children below the age of 15 would be much more empowered and less disempowered if they were exposed to far less violence (and overt sexuality) than they are today. (22)
In the case of learning software I need to take into account the key purchasers (parents, often with Dad taking the lead) as well as the end user, the child. In the case of lunchbox-type snack foods I need to consider that I have two targets: Mom as the key purchaser and the child as the consumer. (30)
This 3-through-7 prelogical period—along with the child’s needs for love and stimulation—also accounts in part for the strong affinity to animals and animal characters found at this young developmental stage. The child can identify or connect with these objects because she can easily attribute human qualities to them, making them symbolically important. (73)
[Barbie and GIJoe] take advantage of the 8+ child’s love for collecting—and now this collecting has moved beyond simple accumulation and into serious collecting complete with this older child’s cognitive abilities that allow discernment and differentiation between, for example, action figures, collector cards, and Barbie doll costumes, all of which require a good deal of attention to detail. (85)
The 8-through-12-year-old’s window on the world includes an increasing concern for his peers and what they think, what they value, what they prefer—and what their opinions are about him. (96)
Most all of this decision-making goes on unconsciously and is imperceptible to the eyes and ears of others, such as parents and teachers. (97)
As children evolve into this preteen age range for the first time they start to concern themselves, consciously or unconsciously, with what it might take to survive on their own and succeed in the real world. And they now have the cognitive abilities to sort this out for themselves. The net effect is that the need to succeed drives them toward attempting to answer key questions for themselves: What are the rules and how can I deal with them? What’s good/bad, right/wrong? What roles are out there in society and which of them do I want to emulate? (97)
The 8-through-12-year period is also an egotistical age (in a natural sense; this no way implies a negative) in that he is very attracted to things that are personalized, things that give him a sense of self-importance and self-worth. Anything personal and self-customized will be attractive, therefore. (99)
Sophisticated board games such as Chess and Monopoly work well for this age, and electronic games are ideal, given their complexity, variety, and challenge. (101)
…there is also an increased interest that emerges during this time in the relationships and dynamics between characters. (104)
While in many cases his need for acceptance may predominate, the 13-through-15-year-old also experiences the need to succeed. (114)
It’s interesting and important to note that brand loyalties often are formed quite early and may tend to last throughout a child’s life… Some indications are that in certain product categories, brand loyalty can be as high as 80 percent as children mature into adulthood. Considering the tremendous monetary impact this figure implies, it’s a mystery why more major corporations don’t pay more attention to building brand loyalty from the earliest possible years. (154)
Think of it as a series of events. From a below-7-year-old’s point of view, the first "event" of a McDonald’s Happy Meal is the characters on the Happy Meal box, along with the colorful graphics and maybe a maze or a game to play or jokes and riddles to read. Then the next "event" is the toy or other premium inside the box, and finally—oh by the way—there’s the "event" of the hamburger itself. Adults are not like this. Adults are attracted like anyone else to attractive graphics and colors on packaging and will respond to a product well named, but their primary focus is on what’s inside the box and what it is going to deliver. (161)
If a character is "not like them" it can bring about rejection. (174)
Children easily enjoy both giving animals love and receiving love from them—especially the domestic animals, the cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, birds, and such with whom they share their space. (174)
Studies of children below the age of 6 and the content of their dreams reveal that as much as 90 percent of such children’s dreams are of animals. (174)
Kids are primarily visual: Especially below the age of 7, but even afterward, kids are primarily visual in their approach to ads, packaging, and promotional materials. Minimize the verbal and maximize the visual when targeting kids 12 and under. (189)
Boys emulate boys, girls emulate boys and girls: Girls will typically accept and enjoy boy characters, spokespersons, and child models and actors, but boys can be turned off by the use of female characters and actors and can quickly formulate the perception that "this is for girls." (190)
Overall, not a book that will improve my development, conversion, or marketing. Feels like it was written for an ivory tower idiot with no observational capability, by a pedant with no skin in the game of creating a winning product.
- Birth through Age 2
- Ages 3 through 7
- Ages 8 through 12
- Ages 13 through 15
- Ages 16 through 19
The writer, Daniel Acuff, also studies boy and girls separately, noting differences in both brain development and preferences in the two. He draws conclusions based on observations made in business under the name: Youth Market Systems Consulting and Character Lab, which conducts focus studies, surveys, and case studies of various popular phenomena through the 1990s, like the Power Rangers, Happy Meal toys, Nintendo Power, and Barbie.
However, the book contains too much fluff, inflated from an abundance of obvious matter-of-fact statements that anybody growing up in America during the 90s would already know: things like
- Girls prefer dolls while boys prefer action figures
- Babies’ brains aren’t yet fully developed enough to understand nuance in sarcasm or abstract concepts
- Kids reject childish characters like Barney as they grow older to seem cool among peers
- Girls’ brains develop earlier emotionally, making them more interested in relationships and role playing
- Boys have more testosterone, making them more inclined to action, like sports and violent games
- Children like animal characters, especially ones with human characteristics.
The book makes so many of these general, obvious statements that much of the book feels like wind: it doesn’t really educate or get me thinking about effective creation or marketing, but rather tries to explain why past franchises were successful. I don’t need a lecture or a retrospective view of why Power Rangers were popular among boys and girls in the 90s. Anyone can observe children and craft a story explaining why something was successful. I don’t need a PhD to trace the appeal of an old 90s toy or character. I also don’t need all the science of brain development, about which lobe is developing at what age. The author spends too much time pontificating about past successes and feigning scientific reasoning for marketplace hits like Teddy Rupxin or Cabbage Patch Kids.
Instead, readers need more guidance about actionable tasks, ways of creating or evaluating products early enough in the development cycle, ways to reach and pitch to parents, marketing tactics to raise awareness, to maximize the success of launch. The book lacks any kind of practical action plan, so it reads instead like an autopsy of 90s hits, rather than an instructive guide on product development, iteration, marketing, and sales.
A sample of the most useful quotes I highlighted:
Accumulating vs. Collecting: Before the age of approximately 6, children are interested in accumulating lots of toys or other fun objects just for the sheer number and mass that this represents. As they shift toward the more left-brain dominant, 8-through-12 stage, they develop the cognitive capacity to differentiate more precisely. This leads to what we term more serious collecting, which involves more comparison of details, more involvement with and attention to detail. (16)
Do we always give kids what they want? Let’s go to the extreme. If we put on pornographic TV programming after school, do you think children would watch it? We have no doubt that a great many would. Does this mean we should put it on the air—after all, "They want it"? Because older males prefer the most violent electronic games, does this mean we should provide them with ever-increasingly violent electronic-game programming? (20)
The Japanese have less of a societal problem with crime and violence than we do (at least so far). Why? The consensus is that it is a "psychocultural environment" issue; they have much tighter control than we do over the ethics and actions of individuals through strong societal moral influences and close-knit family structures. (22)
Children below the age of 15 would be much more empowered and less disempowered if they were exposed to far less violence (and overt sexuality) than they are today. (22)
In the case of learning software I need to take into account the key purchasers (parents, often with Dad taking the lead) as well as the end user, the child. In the case of lunchbox-type snack foods I need to consider that I have two targets: Mom as the key purchaser and the child as the consumer. (30)
This 3-through-7 prelogical period—along with the child’s needs for love and stimulation—also accounts in part for the strong affinity to animals and animal characters found at this young developmental stage. The child can identify or connect with these objects because she can easily attribute human qualities to them, making them symbolically important. (73)
[Barbie and GIJoe] take advantage of the 8+ child’s love for collecting—and now this collecting has moved beyond simple accumulation and into serious collecting complete with this older child’s cognitive abilities that allow discernment and differentiation between, for example, action figures, collector cards, and Barbie doll costumes, all of which require a good deal of attention to detail. (85)
The 8-through-12-year-old’s window on the world includes an increasing concern for his peers and what they think, what they value, what they prefer—and what their opinions are about him. (96)
Most all of this decision-making goes on unconsciously and is imperceptible to the eyes and ears of others, such as parents and teachers. (97)
As children evolve into this preteen age range for the first time they start to concern themselves, consciously or unconsciously, with what it might take to survive on their own and succeed in the real world. And they now have the cognitive abilities to sort this out for themselves. The net effect is that the need to succeed drives them toward attempting to answer key questions for themselves: What are the rules and how can I deal with them? What’s good/bad, right/wrong? What roles are out there in society and which of them do I want to emulate? (97)
The 8-through-12-year period is also an egotistical age (in a natural sense; this no way implies a negative) in that he is very attracted to things that are personalized, things that give him a sense of self-importance and self-worth. Anything personal and self-customized will be attractive, therefore. (99)
Sophisticated board games such as Chess and Monopoly work well for this age, and electronic games are ideal, given their complexity, variety, and challenge. (101)
…there is also an increased interest that emerges during this time in the relationships and dynamics between characters. (104)
While in many cases his need for acceptance may predominate, the 13-through-15-year-old also experiences the need to succeed. (114)
It’s interesting and important to note that brand loyalties often are formed quite early and may tend to last throughout a child’s life… Some indications are that in certain product categories, brand loyalty can be as high as 80 percent as children mature into adulthood. Considering the tremendous monetary impact this figure implies, it’s a mystery why more major corporations don’t pay more attention to building brand loyalty from the earliest possible years. (154)
Think of it as a series of events. From a below-7-year-old’s point of view, the first "event" of a McDonald’s Happy Meal is the characters on the Happy Meal box, along with the colorful graphics and maybe a maze or a game to play or jokes and riddles to read. Then the next "event" is the toy or other premium inside the box, and finally—oh by the way—there’s the "event" of the hamburger itself. Adults are not like this. Adults are attracted like anyone else to attractive graphics and colors on packaging and will respond to a product well named, but their primary focus is on what’s inside the box and what it is going to deliver. (161)
If a character is "not like them" it can bring about rejection. (174)
Children easily enjoy both giving animals love and receiving love from them—especially the domestic animals, the cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, birds, and such with whom they share their space. (174)
Studies of children below the age of 6 and the content of their dreams reveal that as much as 90 percent of such children’s dreams are of animals. (174)
Kids are primarily visual: Especially below the age of 7, but even afterward, kids are primarily visual in their approach to ads, packaging, and promotional materials. Minimize the verbal and maximize the visual when targeting kids 12 and under. (189)
Boys emulate boys, girls emulate boys and girls: Girls will typically accept and enjoy boy characters, spokespersons, and child models and actors, but boys can be turned off by the use of female characters and actors and can quickly formulate the perception that "this is for girls." (190)
Overall, not a book that will improve my development, conversion, or marketing. Feels like it was written for an ivory tower idiot with no observational capability, by a pedant with no skin in the game of creating a winning product.
Want to read
March 15, 2024ملاحظة لي: لم اقرا الكتاب بعد -
توجيه الى غزو خصوصية الاطفال كسوق غير مستغلة ، وطرق فعل ذلك
توجيه الى غزو خصوصية الاطفال كسوق غير مستغلة ، وطرق فعل ذلك
September 5, 2014
The book covers marketing to kids, segmenting by age groups and genders. The most interesting aspect to me was review of "megahit" products and analysis of why they are popular.
As with many books, there are a few gems hidden in what should largely be familiar overview of child development.
A new idea to me (if obvious in retrospect) was that children become more differentiated as they mature, so there are many sub markets for 12-16 year olds, while eg Barbie or Power Rangers or Barney can have broad appeal to the more uniform interests of younger kids.
Another aspect was differentiation between public and private consumption -- an 11 yo who would not wear a bugs bunny t-shirt, would none the less eat Trix cereal.
A few more observations were that animal characters appeal more broadly by avoiding disidentification -- an uncanny valley of sorts
Collecting becomes important at 7-8 yo; younger children may not perceive subtlety, locking in on a single salient attribute of a doll or toy. Anyhow, worth a quick read if you want to have a better understanding of which kids products are likely to appeal to which demographics, which can be useful to an investor.
As with many books, there are a few gems hidden in what should largely be familiar overview of child development.
A new idea to me (if obvious in retrospect) was that children become more differentiated as they mature, so there are many sub markets for 12-16 year olds, while eg Barbie or Power Rangers or Barney can have broad appeal to the more uniform interests of younger kids.
Another aspect was differentiation between public and private consumption -- an 11 yo who would not wear a bugs bunny t-shirt, would none the less eat Trix cereal.
A few more observations were that animal characters appeal more broadly by avoiding disidentification -- an uncanny valley of sorts
Collecting becomes important at 7-8 yo; younger children may not perceive subtlety, locking in on a single salient attribute of a doll or toy. Anyhow, worth a quick read if you want to have a better understanding of which kids products are likely to appeal to which demographics, which can be useful to an investor.
January 2, 2012
It is a good book if you are handling a kids brand and need to know the basics of kids psychology.
However, a little bit outdated in terms with what is hip or innovative for kids.
However, a little bit outdated in terms with what is hip or innovative for kids.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews