McFarlane Toys: The Best of Interactive Marketing - Essay Example

The website www.spawn.com has many interactive tools that provide a customized marketing experience for each user. The user can move quickly into an area of interest among action figures which includes sporting, comics, and music stars among others. The website has consumers to marketer and marketer to consumer capabilities. It has a message board forum with over 50,000 active users which can utilize the forum as a way to buy and sell Spawn items among themselves. Question 2McFarlane Toys is a company that has enjoyed great success during its business history.

The firm exploited an untapped toy market. Currently, the company is facing competition from the big players in the industry in their primary business activity which is action figures. The firm needs to diversify into other segments that have the potential to grow. The relationship the company has built with many artists in the music industry can help the firm penetrate new marketplaces. A growth opportunity for the company is mobile technology downloads. This market is currently in its birth stage.

The customer base of the company is already a technologically savvy crowd. The company can sell both music downloads and video game downloadable products. All the products would be sold directly by the company through its own corporate Spawn website. The video game segment is an industry in its growth stage, thus more releases of these types of products can help the company further increase its revenues. The fact that the toy industry is not very profitable outside the United States is a good reason for the company to diversify.

Within the toy industry, there is also room for growth for the company. We are living in a knowledge economy. Currently, a toy segment that is not being targeted by large players in the learning and exploration segment. McFarlane can utilize its copyrights to its advantage and create learning toys utilizing its figures. The figures would interact with the user and teach a variety of subjects. These toys can be used to teach the customer’s subjects such as new languages.