Saw this today (bbc.co.uk link):
Aiming toys at just boys or girls hurts economy
Thanks for the link, tahra - that is an excellent article. This section of the article explains the boy=blue and girl=pink problem very well:
" . . . This aggressive gender segregation is a consequence of big-company marketing tactics. As every successful marketeer knows, differentiation makes for greater profit margins and segmentation gives you a bigger overall market, so with three-year-old girls only being able to choose pink tricycles, then the manufacturer can charge more for that special girly shade of pink and the premium princess saddle. And of course, that trike cannot be handed over to a brother or nephew, ensuring further sales of blue bikes with Action Man handlebars. It has now got to the point where it is difficult to buy toys for girls, in particular, which are not pink, princess-primed and/or fairy-infused. . . "
I studied marketing in college as part of earning a management degree and I can assure you that this is exactly what goes on in the marketing departments of pretty much all corporations. It's not just about gender either - think Coke, diet coke, coke with lime, cherry coke, decaf coke, etc. where the different products appeal to different segments of consumers. The goal is to have as many different products as possible in the company's product line to appeal to as many different types of customers as possible so that the maximum amount of shelf space within the store is achieved and the consumer is urged to buy more and more. As we have seen, Playmobil has gone further and further down this path over the past few years. I wonder whether Playmobil toys would ever have made it to market at all 40 years ago if the decision had been left to the marketing department.
