Disney, GroupM to study kids' mindset

Disney in collaboration with GroupM has launched KidSense, an initiative to understand kids' mindset and their decision-making role in the family.

Rajat Jain, managing director, The Walt Disney Company (India), said, "The idea is to unlock value in this growing market segment and provide relevant insights into how they think."

Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO, GroupM (South Asia), pointed out that there was a serious gap in information on kids behaviour and preferences and more often than not generalisations were made based on personal experiences.

The study which was done over 10 cities and 3,400 kids in the 4-14 age group threw up some definite patterns in how involved kids tend to be in purchase decisions even in non-traditional categories.

One of the key insights which emerged from this study is that there isn't a very big difference between how kids of both genders react to advertising and their involvement in different categories. Girls in fact tend to be more aware of automobile advertising than boys.

While price is an area where there is extremely low involvement and awareness among the kids, aspects such as model and even the colour of the product see high involvement from kids, even in categories such as clothes, footwear and bikes.

Re-enforcing what has been widely believed now, B Narayanaswamy, executive director, Indica Research, said that between 7-10 per cent of brand preferences in categories such as apparel, televisions and mobiles had been changed based on a suggestion by the kid.

Jasmeet Kaur Srivastava of The Third Eye, said that it was wrong to categorise all the kids as one collective unit as a four-year old was very different from a seven-year old. These were broadly categorised as the Toothager (4-5 year olds), Toonagers (6-9 year) and Tweenagers (10-14 year).

The other trend noticed here was that kids were growing up faster. It's no longer surprising to see a ten-year old behave like a twelve-year old.

This difference becomes important to marketers as it enables them to tailor their communication strategy depending who exactly they want to talk to.

This research is the first in a series of activities Disney has planned including seminars and more indepth studies on the topic.