Week 4 EOC -- Big

The movie Big has a very interesting meaning when evaluated from a marketing research perspective. In the movie they talked specifically about marketing reports while walking through the toy store and about how they can’t really give the kind of information that going to an actual store can. It’s a lot of numbers that a lot of people don’t understand. When they were in the marketing meeting Tom Hanks’ character Josh had probably one of the best points, I don’t get it. There are all these numbers showing that the company has grown in action adventure toys over the years but they have the potential to grow more if they made products that kids wanted even more. “It’s a building that turns into a robot? Why not a robot that turns into a bug?” A unique perspective got the entire staff excited about the prospect of a new toy and even more profits because the toy sounded fun even to them. The movie offers, perhaps unknowingly, one of the ideal things that a marketer and company would want. They have at their disposal their target market, a 13 year old boy who plays with and has an opinion about toys, working for them and they don’t even know it, and yet he will probably have, or at least the possibility of, having a huge impact on the financial success of the company by being able to tell them almost exactly what their main consumer will want and (have their parents) eventually buy. They have sort of been handed a focus group without having to go through and actually create the group, and it may be better because he is willing to tell them the truth whereas perhaps some children who may in fact be chosen to participate in a focus group would become nervous around the adults and may not want to be completely honest and tell the adult that the toy is not fun. If only an actual 13 year old boy could end up working for a toy company….