Topic: Gendered toy marketing (children)
Sources:
1. Beyond the Dolls House? – ABI/INFORM Collection – ProQuest. https://search.proquest.com/abicomplete/docview/2321178 767/D23B410B6501445BPQ/10?accountid=10427. Accessed 4 Feb. 2020.
This article aims to examine the concepts of gendered, entrepreneurial identity and fetishism through Barbie entrepreneur products. This is used to examine how identity in this realm is constructed from childhood and exposure to these products can affect both identity and entrepreneurial identity. This is related to how female entrepreneurial identities are influence by socially constructed and arguably fetishized images and artifacts of identity in the workplace, and how these are represented in the form of things like Barbie Dolls. This article is extremely interesting and may bring a lot to the table for our website. Especially when it comes to how this gendered marketing for children affects women and girls.
2. Exploring Brand Masculine Patterns: Moving beyond Monolithic Masculinity: [1] – ABI/INFORM Collection – ProQuest. https://search.proquest.com/abicomplete/docview/1691005068/DBE7BC8DDA454DFAPQ/14?accountid=10427. Accessed 4 Feb. 2020.
This article talks about how gender has been long used by brands as a basis for segmentation and targeting strategies. This is because gender segments are easily identifiable, accessible and large enough to be profitable. Therefore, gender is still considered an important and central component when it comes to segmentation. However, there tends to be many issues with this. One of them is the confusion between gender and sex. Another thing that is important when it comes to looking at gendered marketing is the brand’s masculine dimensions (BMD), because practitioners use masculine gender-based marketing strategies to develop and manage their brands. Looking at a brand’s masculine dimensions can bring a lot of important things to the table when it comes to marketing for a brand. This article can be really valuable to our project because it will help us look at things through the marketer’s perspective.
3. Wilkie, James E. B. Are Numbers Gendered? Numerical Gender Associations and Judgment. Northwestern University, 2012. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/abicomplete/docview/1018061185/abstract/27A17A6C51134CC3PQ/6.
This article that explains that gender is an important factor in choice and judgment processes. This is because gender norms and gender identify are key concerns in decision making and femininity and masculinity are fundamental to social organization. The article then goes on to claim that all numbers are also associated with a gender based on whether or not they are even or odd. All odd numbers tend to be associated with masculinity while even numbers tend to be associated with femininity. This makes it so that these associations can influence the product judgments because of these numbers, even in things like pricing. The second part of this article examines why these associations exist by examining the potential metaphoric similarities between the two types of gender and numbers. This is a very interesting article with many important findings. Among the findings is the fact that people do go about their lives assigning inanimate objects gender identities and then interacting with them in ways that are congruent to their own gender identity. This comes into account while consumers are choosing what to buy. People tend to form their gender associations through metaphoric processes, for example when a product is described as “strong” or “gentle”.
4. Let Toys Be Toys: Increased Targeting Has Led to a Lazy, Stereotype-Driven Approach – ABI/INFORM Collection – ProQuest. https://search.proquest.com/abicomplete/docview/1954750058/D23B410B6501445BPQ/4?accountid=10427. Accessed 4 Feb. 2020.
The company called John Lewis launched a gender-free children’s clothing line the year this paper was published (2017). It was kicked off in response to how extreme gendered marketing has become in the toy sector. Large companies like Lego are just beginning to respond to complaints about how extreme gendered toy marketing has gotten. In 2017 Lego agreed that they would begin to do testing in mixed groups, which surprisingly they haven’t done before. People fought back against the announcement of the gender-neutral clothing line that John Lewis put out, but mostly because of the terms being used.
This article states that when companies put out products that are gender neutral, this really makes a difference because telling boys and girls they are supposed to be different has consequences in terms of their development. Furthermore, many of the ways that products are marketed by gender can contribute the sexism.
This article also goes onto point out, that it is odd that companies think mostly by gender when many of the recent toy crazes have been popular with both boys and girls.