Mattel makes play for No. 1 spot - Top Brands Part II: Consumer Survey

Discount Store News, Oct 19, 1992

Discount store shoppers are very brand oriented when it comes to toys and more confident than last year that they'll find what they are looking for.

Three-quarters of consumers said they have a brand preference when shopping for toys, up seven percentage points from 1991. They also said they are very confident about finding specific toys on their shopping list.

In fact, when shoppers were asked to measure their confidence on a scale of 1 to 9 with 9 meaning they are most confident, 45% said they were sure they would find what they were looking for at their discount store, up from 44% in 1991.

In total, response levels produced a confidence rating of 7.53 for toys, up from 7.35 a year ago.

However, brand loyalty is a bit shaky with toy consumers. In many cases, consumers aren't looking for a specific brand as much as a particular toy. As a result, less than half, 46%, would switch brands if they couldn't find what they were looking for, the same response as last year.

Conversely, 54% said they would skip the purchase if their brand was unavailable.

They would not choose a private label toy. Just 3% expressed a preference for private label toys, among the lowest rates in the survey.

This year, consumers said the toy brand they look for most is Mattel, the same as in 1991. Store managers, however, said their top performing toy brand is Fisher-Price, No. 2 with consumers.

Overall, seven top toy brands appeared on both the consumer and store manager top brands lists.

The biggest difference between the two lists is that Hasbro, a giant toy manufacturer whose labels include Playskool, Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers and Tonka, was mentioned by few consumers as a brand they seek. It ranked 14th among the top toy brands. Also, Nintendo, associated by many retailers as a CE product, and Ninja Turtles, which fell off the managers' list, both received enough mentions to make the Top 10 consumer list.

Overall, the number of mentions for each toy brand named by consumers as one they seek was very small. Mattel, at the top, was mentioned by fewer than one in three consumers. Fisher-Price was mentioned by one in five shoppers.

The low mention rate persisted at the three major discount chains. Target shoppers were the most enthusiastic about the toy brands, with nearly four in 10 naming Mattel as a brand to look for, and a quarter naming Fisher-Price. [Tabular Data Omitted]