Mattel In China Case Study

Mattel had in China the Market-seeking motive, with their expansion, they wanted to get a part of the Chinese toy market and wanted the company to achieve more growth from a market that weren’t their domestic. The falling sales in the years before gave them the last kick to open the flagship for Barbie oversea. From Mattel's $3 Billion in annual sales only 5 percent were coming from China, the company thought there was a lot more opportunity for Barbie to grow with the Chinese sales.

Mattel has clearly the strategy of internationalization. They wanted a long-term sale expansion and attempted to use the same strategy, as they use in America, on Chinese toy market. Mattel thought that no matter what country you were in, Barbie would be the same

Their Barbie dolls were still addressed to girls between 5 to 12 years old, besides that they had different activities to get also adult women into the target group for Barbie. That made Mattel to have a standardized strategy which tries to address a unique and wide target group. Mattel used for their strategy the marketing mix with their 4P’s, Product, Place, Price and

Mattel never open a standalone store for their under brands. For Barbie’s 50th birthday they decided to give Barbie her own store. The House of Barbie in Shanghai was so placed, that it apply to the parents with medium-high level income. It was located at the luxury shopping Street of Shanghai.

3.1.2 What went wrong with the Marketing Mix?

The Products for Barbie was in the opinion of the most women felt that the prices were too much and thought the quality of the products weren't good enough. A reason why they didn’t like the clothes was also, that the Barbie clothes were a bit sexy and Chinese women’s prefer cute.

While the women’s prefer cute clothes, they prefer for their child also educational and tutoring toys. The high-income parents don’t want to spend a lot of money for dolls and clothes; they want books and teaching