A TOY COMPANY FOR A NEW AGE: HOW MATTEL IS REINVENTING ITSELF FOR MODERN CONSUMERS
To get modern kids engaged with a toy, it likely requires more than what conventional products have offered. A simple doll no longer enough to grab the attention of young consumers who are constantly bombarded with entertainment options through their mobile devices. For Mattel, this trend suggests the need to reinvent itself as a technology, rather than consumer product company, even as it continues to expand and differentiate its product lines.
The CEO of Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, came from a tech background and has proposed a goal to define the firm as a "future-proof kid-experience company" that will focus on digital content, learning activities, and smart toys as its primary value offerings. Mattel will still sell Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls, but the focus will be on how consumers can interact with those products across multiple platforms, not just with the physical items themselves.
At the same time, Mattel recognizes that its focus also needs to be on making the toys fun. Many new technology-driven toys seem to prioritize the technology over the fun, such as the Mattel-owned Fisher-Price Code-a-Pillar, designed to help teach children how to code. Although the idea behind the toy makes sense, few children wanted to play with it. So Mattel is looking to better integrate increased and advanced technology into toys that emphasize storytelling, including Barbie, so that the young consumers can invent and create their own forms of enjoyable play.
These relatively radical shifts come on the heels of some turmoil in Mattel's performance. It fired its previous CEO and had been functioning under temporary leadership before hiring the current CEO away from Google. Despite a couple of good sales quarters, overall its revenues were falling. Even the typically beneficial holiday shopping seasons have been weak in recent years. An excess of inventory after the most recent holidays forced Mattel to offer deep discounts to move the items. Still, its entertainment-related business rose 58 percent in the past year, largely due to the introduction of Cars 3-related toys. However, such licensed toys offer lower margins than Mattel's original toys, so it is in the company's best interest to produce and sell more original product lines, like Barbie.
Accordingly, Mattel has no Intentions to stop producing some of Its best-known products. Instead, together with Its technology orientation, Mattel is seeking to update the image of its dolls, most notably with its introduction of a wider variety of Ken dolls in its Fashionistas line. The 15 new dolls feature three general body types, as well as far greater diversity in apparent ethnicities, skin tones, clothing, and hairstyles. The goal is to appeal more to diverse modern consumers, such as those who might believe that a "man bun" is exactly the kind of style that Barbie's boyfriend needs to sport.
Such diversity initiatives also inform a line of 12 dolls, designed to represent the top female wrestlers with the WWE. Thus, young female fans can pose their favourite wrestler Charlotte Flair in a flying leap off the ropes or have Nikki and Brie Bella collaborating to bring down an opponent. This line purposefully and explicitly does not feature any men, encouraging girls to embrace new roles that subvert traditional gender stereotypes. Mattel also launched Robotics Engineer Barbie to pique the interest of girls in careers in STEM fields. It partnered with a gaming company, Tynker, to create Barbie-inspired coding skills exercises.
As Barbie approached her 60" birthday, Mattel introduced a doll featuring the image of Canadian Olympic figure skater, Tessa Virtue, in its "Role Models" series."" The company hopes to inspire young girls by honouring women who have broken boundaries. New, more diverse product offerings include dolls in wheelchairs and some with prosthetic limbs, to better reflect real life. Barbie has been around for decades. Recent changes have helped propel retail sales to their highest level in five years, keeping Barbie firmly entrenched in the minds and hearts of tomorrow's children, too.

Questions
1. Based on the product development process described in chapter 8 of Mc Graw Hill, choose one of the new products discussed in the case and explain how it might flow through the different steps in the process.

2. Using the product life cycle, discuss what stage the product you chose in question 1 fits in. Evaluate Mattel's strategy for the product based on its current life cycle stage