Strategy and Positioning Analysis Part 2

Strategy and Positioning Analysis Lego Boost 11

Strategy and Positioning Analysis Lego Boost

Darryl Tungate, Chris Carey, Marcus Shoals, Brandon Lee

MKT/421

March 20, 2017

Danny Rudick

Overview of Organization

In 1932, Ole Kirk Christansen developed a master carpenter shop in Billund, Denmark which went on to create and introduce Lego in 1958 (Rosenberg, 2014). Now Lego has become a household name and holds a worth of nearly $15 Billion! Legos are not just for kids. Lego bricks come in all shapes, sizes, and looks. Themed Lego pieces include Star Wars, Star Trek, and other famous movies. There are groups, collector meetings and even a BrickCon in Seattle. Lego has certainly reached all parts of our globe and many kids and adults continue to play with them today. Lego is the leader in such bricks and all who have tried to keep up have failed. Lego is so popular that sales jumped 13% in 2015 after the release of their first movie (Kell, 2016). The Lego industry is booming and with more and more products developing, it is no wonder they have the sales they do. Lego boost is designed to teach kids how to program Lego robots with an application on their smart device.

Description of Product

Lego has really started an evolution within their product ring. They have taken Lego bricks that can be designed in many different ways, added them to a six axis drive, and allowable to be programmed from a tablet. This is the Lego Boost. For $160 you get the full starter kit which includes 840 bricks, the axis drive, and 5 character designs. This is a way to really get children using their thinking caps and allow them to interact with Lego on another level. One character is named Vernie. Vernie is the first bot that anyone should build. A friendly, talkative, and interactive guy that moves his head and has a sense of humor. You start with the head so he can begin to talk to you as you build. The really important part of this is the coding. Within the app the user, player, student, or child can program the different robot models into doing different things. The Guitar 4000 lets you play your own music. The best part about the entire thing is that all Lego bricks can interact with this set. So you can take your Star Wars Lego set and program it to do many things. What will you build?

SWOT Analysis

Competitive Analysis

Lego’s has been around for a long time now and they hold a big share of the toy industry. With the launch of the New Lego boost, it is important that Lego preform a competitive analysis to see how their new robotic toy will stack up against its competitors. So, who are Lego’s competitors in this market space? Lego has had a more advanced version of boost called Mindstorms, which has been around for quite some time now, but is focusing on a younger generation with boost. Other toys like Tenka Labs has come up with the Circuit Cubes. Circuit Cubes are electrically charged building blocks that can include such functions as a motor, light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, sound, sensors, and a battery (TAKAHASHI, 2017). In addition, Meccano has the Meccanoid 2.0 XL and Meccanoid 2.0 featuring 3 easy and innovative programming options Learned Intelligent Movement, Ragdoll Avatar and Drag and Drop Programming incorporated in its Robotics Building platform. Lastly there is the SBrick Plus it is a brick that you can place into your LEGO models so you can control them remotely using a smart device like a phone, tablet, gamepad or even Chromebook or PC.

With the exception of Meccano, all of the companies have extremely low market shares compared to Lego. Each company seems to have a focus on suppling an educational function to purchasing their product. SBricks and Circuit Cubes are startups and became known through crowd funding site like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. Meccano was originally an English toy company that has been around for over 100 years and have toys in a global market space. All of companies are offering a similar product as Lego, but Lego has a huge brand name in the US and internationally which make them more attractive to customer even though you can get the other competitors product for a less expensive price tag .

Target Market Segments

There's no doubt that children love Legos. It allows them to use their hands, eyes and activates the frontal lobe of their brain.  For young humans who are still working on perfecting their motor skills, language and writing, Lego Boost has the ability to boost your child's cognitive abilities by challenging them to learn, understand and remember the given operating instructions. The digital requirements encourage them to not only rely on their hands to build, but also that their minds to grasp the concept of modern programming and technology.

Because of the learning abilities Lego Boost offers, Lego has targeted a specific market that in fact covers a large variety of what?. Specifically, Lego targets children and anyone else who can imagine or revive their inner youth. It allows users to breathe life into their Legos. With a minimum age of 7, Lego boost allows children at a young age to learn simple yet crucial programming in order to personalize their creation to its full potential. By doing this, children will understand diversity and personalization. Because the mind of a child works like an absorbent sponge, the materials they will be introduced to could possibly influence future decisions such as choosing Engineering or Technician careers. The possibilities are truly unlimited.

Unfortunately, this product is a little on the expensive side. Geographically, it may not be distributed in every country, but for those who can afford it, the children will reap the benefits from this highly technological product. Demographically, it's pretty obvious that this product targets young children or those who are still highly involved in the world of Legos. As stated earlier, improving cognitive dissonance is just one perk to the psychographic focus of the product. It allows children to calmly obtain programming skills while still challenging their ability to use their hands to build and personalize.

In reality, all these factors boil down to the most important targeted consumer, the parents. Children love toys, electronics and countless other time consuming products on the market. But children, for the most part, don't have the ability to purchase or wisely choose a product to purchase. So this means the adult or guardian must decide for the child. If the product doesn't catch the eye of the parent, you've already failed. Once parents see the productivity involved in Lego Boost, they'll realize that their child will likely learn rather than waste time entertaining themselves on an unproductive product such as first person shooter games like Call of Duty or subliminally influencing games like Grand Theft Auto. Parents usually do not condone the use of violent games, especially if they are not educational. Lego boost offers an AI experience while allowing children to learn its features and abilities.

Positioning Statement

LEGO lift is an electronic gadget manufactured for children aged 7 and above. The machine is built with supercharged and coding capabilities where children can add movements, sounds and other customizations on the device. For a kid to be able to customize the sounds and movement skills of LEGO BOOST, an easy-to-use App is used, based on the coding environment. Move Hug powers this child-play machine. It has helped in making the device have a stud-covered brick with built-in which has a built-in sensor that enables tilting, motors, together with sensors that combine color with distance detection. It also includes a set of building instructions in five different models which are Frankie the Cat, the Guitar 4000, Vernie the Robot, the Autobuilder, and the Multi-Tool Rover 4 (M.T.R.4). This set of LEGO BOOT allows for a child to have a platform where they can engage in basic coding and building, to enhance their skills for future use, creativity, and personalizing their areas of interest (LEGO® BOOST, 2017).

As explained by LEGO Group head Simon Kent, their main ambition is to bring the dreams of children concerning LEGO creations to reality as they know how much hungry kids are when it comes to LEGO creation. He went further to explain that LEGO BOOST is aimed at making a child’s play experience limitless. More importantly, adding coding opportunity makes the product be how and where they wanted it to be.

As mentioned above, LEFO BOOST has been developed for children of 7 years old and above—the target market. These are the kids whose brains will be prepared enough to be able to operate the devices. Also, children at this age are fond of playing, and they are very much enthusiastic about learning new things. Also, at this age children usually have memory retention of the things they learn, and thus, the coding and building knowledge they acquire at this age will help them in future as they enhance their knowledge in these fields.

LEGO BOOST comes along with a free downloadable app has guidance in it, it also contains instructions about simple coding and building, and also commands for use by children to customize the five LEGO creations, each at its own time. The LEGO creations, especially for construction, are designed in a way that they are easy to understand, in a horizontal layer. To make the experience more customized according to a child’s preference, LEGO BOOST allows for children to customize the devices’ movements, record voices to their creations, and adding other personalities without requiring for them to type and spell words, which would be tiresome. Using the same App, a child can engage in more than 60 activities that can enable them to add other building and coding, as well as play designs. These are the features that make LEGO BOOST unique and outstanding while compared to other child-play products developed by other companies .

Conclusion

Several things make LEGO outstanding among its competitors. One of them is specialization. LEGO BOOST gives a good illustration of what LEGO specializes with. The company is aimed at satisfying children’s passion for steady play. Also, it looks into ensuring that the plays are not just small ones, but they develop children’s thinking, they are educational. As a result of specialization, the company can build unique products that are positioned and also branded as quality products.

Kell, J. (2016, March 1). Lego says 2015 was its 'best year ever' after huge sales jump. Retrieved from Fortune: http://fortune.com/2016/03/01/lego-sales-toys-2015/

Rosenberg, J. (2014, December 16). LEGO toy bricks first introduced. Retrieved from Thoughtco: https://www.thoughtco.com/lego-toy-bricks-first-introduced-1779349

Kickstarter. (n.d.). Connect. Code. Create. With SBrick Plus. Retrieved from Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sbrick/connect-code-create-with-sbrick-plus

Meccano. (n.d.). The History of Meccano. Retrieved from Meccano Engineering and Robotics: http://www.meccano.com/about

TAKAHASHI, D. (2017, Feb 17). Tenka Labs unveils Circuit Cubes to take LEGO-like building blocks into electronic age. Retrieved from venturebeat.com: http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/19/how-parkopedia-became-a-parking-data-powerhouse/

LEGO® BOOST Building and Coding Set Unveiled at CES Empowers Children to Bring Their LEGO Creations to Life. (2017, January 04). Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2017/january/lego-boost

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