The Purchase Dynamic For Toys – Pester Power

Toy Purchase Dynamic: How & Why Toys Are Bought

The toy industry seems to talk about pester power a lot less nowadays for some reason. In fact when I first discussed the topic with my first boss in the toy business back in the late 1990s, she told me that the industry had moved on from pester power to a more advanced negotiation based approach. Frankly, I’m not sure that was the right analysis then and it certainly isn't now. Pester power is the best way of summing up what often happens in the purchase dynamic where parent and child are involved when it comes to certain (more kid appealing) categories of toys.

I’ve conducted many hundreds of research groups with children and parents, and I can categorically tell you that pester power has not gone away, in fact it is as strong a factor now as it has ever been. This article will look at how each of the parties approaches the process of buying toys, and then what happens when their often differing perspectives meet.

Children are in many ways simpler and more straightforward than adults. Children are usually fairly open about what exactly they want, with a focused single mindedness and determination that most adults (excluding certain industry leading sales people!) do not have. When it comes to getting that treat or snack that the parent doesn’t want the child to have, or most importantly when it comes to having a particular toy or play item, children can be very effective in terms of getting their own way. Not via any kind of complicated intellectual arguments, but just by sheer persistence and pestering!

This quote from Ovid is the best analogy to describe how children go about getting their way: “Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence”.

In practical terms, if a parent and child are in a shop, and the child decides they want something their usual approach would be to repeatedly ask the parent to buy it, regardless of how many times the parent says no, and regardless of how exasperated the parent gets. Repeatedly asking for the same thing does work surprisingly often from the child’s point of view, and because they are learning and developing the best approach to getting what they want from life, if this approach works once, most children (quite rightly) presume it will work again, and again and again!

This seems an absurd approach to many adults, as adults usually become largely conditioned to taking no for an answer (because overly pushy persistent people are often judged to be rude in the adult world we eventually become conditioned to take no for an answer far easier than children who still think to ask why/why not). The viewpoint often changes though when you yourself become that parent and you’re in a rush because your car parking ticket is running out, a personal activity to rush off to, or because you have other shopping to do in a limited time. In this way the temptation to pacify/placate the child by giving in can often win out. Clearly many parents stand strong and won’t give in to the child, and if you asked parents in research they would tell you that they would certainly never give in to such pestering themselves. Yet the same parents can often be observed giving in to the child in reality because it moves them forward towards whatever else they are trying to do.

One of the most interesting and important factors to consider when we look at pester power is that the dynamic often varies by product category. Some categories are more/mostly driven by pester power and kid appeal, some others are primarily driven by parental preference, and some are driven by a combination of both. You really need to understand how the dynamic works in your main product categories, because that dynamic tells you how to approach your marketing, who you need to communicate to and most importantly what your message should be.

The start point to understanding this is to look at what children want from their play objects/experiences and what parents want. Children primarily want to have fun! They are the ultimate hedonists in that respect, they want to play freely doing whatever they want. They also want to be ‘cool’ and to play with things that are really cool. When we test really hot toys there is a moment of pure excitement and usually a spontaneous expression of something akin to ‘wow’ when we reveal toys to the children. If we look at toy appeal as a hierarchy, then these really fun play patterns and really ‘cool’ toys are at the top. Children do though have other motivations, albeit lower down the hierarchy - they often want to be as clever as they can be, and to prove that fact, because at toy buying/playing age (in fact up until close to secondary school age c. 10-12 years) children generally aspire to the approval of teachers and parents to a somewhat surprising degree. So products which support these definite but somewhat weaker aspirations may also appeal  to the child in some circumstances.

From a parents point of view, the vast majority of parents want what is best for their child/children and to feel like/be viewed by others as a ‘good parent’. Parents also though want not to be pestered, to have peace and quiet and to be able to do their own things away from their children – both in terms of focusing on necessary chores and in terms of their own fun activities. The balance between the child’s needs and being a good parent versus the parent’s own needs/wants plays out in different ways depending on the parents concerned, but there is no doubt that these factors are usually present to some degree in most cases.

So what does this mean for toy companies? It means that if you are active in a category which parents are likely to perceive as tacky, a waste of money or ‘crappy’, you had better make sure you have full kid appeal, because the child is going to have to really pester to get your products! On the other hand if your main product category is something more educationally or socially focused i.e. craft kit or board game, you had better make sure you appeal to what the adult is looking for in terms of positively developing and occupying the child while making the product as appealing to the child as you can.

Where in fact my first boss in the toy business was closer to the mark in terms of talking about a ‘negotiation process’ is in these more mutually driven purchases/activities/product categories. The child may want something that the parent sees as ‘crappy’ or ‘just rubbish’, but the parties may mutually consent (eventually) to a more worthy purchase instead via a process of negotiation.

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