Mattel Manufacturers of Products That Are Aimed

Mattel

Manufacturers of products that are aimed at children do have a special obligation with respect to their products and the marketing thereof. Considerable controversy has erupted as the result of advertising to children. Children are impressionable, and while they are not the gatekeepers who control spending in the family, it is worth considering that products marketed to children are not detrimental. As Clay (2000) notes, a key source of controversy is when psychologists help marketers to understand children's minds in order to sell better to them. For most people, there is a different standard of ethics that needs to be applied when marketing to children, and this is something that marketers at Mattel need to keep in mind. For Mattel, marketing to children is a necessity, but the company needs to bear in mind that despite the fact that opinions on the issue are divided, most consumers feel that marketing to children should be done with the highest ethical standards so that no harm comes to the children as the result of the marketing effort.

The Ethisphere survey indicates that Mattel has likely performed well with respect to managing ethics at its suppliers. The lead paint issue is something, however, that the company could have foreseen. Since that point, however, Mattel has not only remedied the situation with its Chinese suppliers but has had a strong record. The company moved proactively to institute changes to its suppliers' ethics policies, and has become more dedicated to enforcing its mandates (Magno, 2008). Overall, Mattel has a strong track record, and when a mistake was made the company appears to have addressed that mistake in a proactive manner.

Mattel has a detailed set of global manufacturing principles (Mattel, 2011). These come under a number of categories: management systems, wages and working hours and several other human resource categories. I would note that the lead paint issue is not covered in these principles, as it pertains directly to manufacturing products that are safe for people to use. The use of product inputs that are safe for children is therefore something that I would add to Mattel's global manufacturing principles. It is surprising that the company's most significant ethical issue with respect to manufacturing is not addressed. However, that can be remedied and that would be my foremost recommendation at this point, since a wide range of potential trouble issues on the human resources front have already been established.

Mattel is almost entirely responsible for the production in China. Mattel draws up the specification to which the Chinese suppliers work, and is ultimately responsible for ensuring that those products meet its specifications before they reach the market. Mattel therefore needs to ensure that it puts together not only good specifications that encompass all conceivable issues but also that includes a number of controls to ensure that the production is as expected.

Thus, Mattel could have avoided the lead paint problem in two ways. The first is that the company could have ensured that its contract with the Chinese supplier addressed the lead paint issue, but also the company could have tested the products. That the products made it to market and a recall was necessary means that the company's testing procedures were inadequate to detect this defect. As a result, Mattel could have taken a proactive approach and had systems in place at two levels to ensure these tainted products did not make it to market.