Aumi Arias- Assignment C

Toys R Us used to be the most influential company of toys in America just a couple of decades ago. Since the moment it was founded in 1957, throughout the following years this brand showed a promising and stable future being the number one nightmare for its competitors. It seemed that there was no other path for their future than to expand and grow. Nevertheless, the company saw the end of its glory days because, among other factors, it failed to pursue new tactics to maintain its value in the outgrowing market of toys companies and ended up filing bankruptcy in 2017.

I’m going to be ranking some of the main marketing environment components that I consider were significant in the downfall of Toys R Us.

1)Demographic Factors: The company failed to execute the necessary changes to keep the brand as appealing for the new generation of kids who are more captivated by electronics, video games and social media. When a company fails to listen and provide their target population with the things that they’re interested in, the demand on the brand will naturally decay. For this reason, I believe that their main mistake was not listening to their customers’ needs.

2)Social Factors: As a toys’ brand the public that it used to target was kids. This company has existed since 1957, back then the interests of this group were totally different to the kids today, however this didn’t necessarily mean that it would be harder for them to reach their demographic. The way that companies influence the population has changed overall with the technology era. This brand lost the opportunity to evolve into creating a deeper and effective presence through technology as a means to promote themselves.

3)Political and Legal Factors: The company’s intentions to expand their horizons to the online market was a good strategy in theory. They stipulated a partnership with Amazon in which they would pay for exclusively. However, Amazon did not respect the deal and started selling toys from ToysRUs competitors. After terminating the deal and winning the lawsuit to Amazon, ToysRUs had to start their online presence from scratch, but by that moment it was too late to make any difference.

4)Competitive Factors: Despite the increasingly changing times, ToysRUs stated pretty much the same from its beginnings to the end. It was a very big company, for which huge changes and innovation were impossible to achieve at a fast pace. Unfortunately, the emerging competitors such as Walmart and Target were able to provide an experience that satisfied their consumers’ needs. There was nothing unique that would separate ToysRUs from many other innovative brands.

5)Economic Factors: After their past failures this company became an unsustainable business. They were in an urgent need of rebranding in order to keep up with their competitors. Unfortunately, by the time that they realized this, they couldn’t do anything as they were facing a huge debt.