Brite Briks Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning

Background and Competitors

Brite Briks is a multinational company in the business of manufacturing construction toys. Brite Briks ranks third in size with Lego leading this market, followed by Mega Bloks (Solomon, 2013). Both Lego and Mega Bloks are inter-competitors as the toy construction products they sell are very similar and fundamentally compatible, although the brick-to-block match is not exact. Over 100 countries offer Brite Briks for sale, featuring a line of roughly 100 items in four block sizes (Solomon, 2013).

The exponential growth in Brite Briks' sales over the past five years indicates that the company's overall approach to marketing to its target audience is effective. Indeed, Brite Briks has the largest market share in the preschool construction toy segment (Solomon, 2013).

Situational Analysis

Several key environmental factors shape Brite Briks' competitive landscape:

The company's internal capabilities and constraints include the following:

Strengths: Brite Briks can utilize international experience and brand name to achieve economies of scale while entering the Japanese market.

Marketing Objectives and Strategies

Weaknesses: The company must address its inability to patent and protect its product, and discourage local competition by entirely customizing brand personality and product line for the Japanese market.

Opportunities: Integrate distribution with Japanese channels to cultivate relationship-focused retailers, and hire Japanese customer-facing representatives to increase the local feel of products and services.

Threats: Redesign packaging and offer integral storage to accommodate the limited space in Japanese homes. Market the redesigned kits in Europe as well.

The marketing concept centers around the creation of mutually satisfying exchanges based on two important factors: an understanding of what customers need and the cost of satisfying those needs (Solomon, 2013). Thus, value is created for customers when organizations meet customers' needs. Notably, these customer needs cannot be met by customers on their own, or else the customers would prefer not to try to meet these needs by themselves.

Key metrics that Brite Briks will use include perceived product quality and perceived service quality (Lowe, 2003). Other marketing objectives are related to customer loyalty and retention, which are crucial since consumer product differentiation in this sector is very low. Although the target market segments most interested in toy construction materials are not particularly price sensitive, two other relevant measures are relative price and customer and segment profitability. These metrics will be shown in a marketing dashboard (Lowe, 2003).

Brite Briks makes a great toy, especially for the preschool market. The First Builders sets are designed for the youngest customers. However, Lego's lead in the market is both chronological and reputational, as the brand is considered superior to both Brite Briks and Mega Bloks by construction toy enthusiasts. Brite Briks is content to be a follower within the industry.

However, just as Mega Bloks has focused on dominating the preschool market for toy construction blocks, Brite Briks is determined to increase market share in toy construction materials for girls. For example, Brite Briks is developing a line of travel destination kits that will align with the fashionable wardrobes of ethnic Barbie dolls.

Brite Briks may retain an orientation to product over service. Yet the company shows strong movement toward "the new dominant logic for marketing" that positions service as a central deliverable in all transactions in which the business engages (Solomon, et al., 2013, p. 242). This means that Brite Briks must recognize that the products the company manufactures actually contribute less to the company's value proposition than does the provision of service.

Close Competitor Differentiation

Here is one way that Brite Briks has interpreted this new-era orientation: The customer service pages on the website provide easy systems for ordering replacement parts for pieces that are missing from kits, are of poor quality, or have been recalled. In addition, kid-friendly, illustration-based instructions for assembling the kits can be accessed on the customer service pages. This level of service keeps both children and parents happy and engaged with the product.

In a rather brilliant move, Brite Briks co-opted licensed character brands as part of their construction toy offering, thereby meeting a need that consumers might not have even fully articulated: how to have more fun with their favorite or highly popular character toys. That is to say that Brite Briks has created core products (the blocks or bloks) that can be used with other major licensed character brands.

Brite Briks figures are not constructed of interchangeable blocks in the manner of Lego figures, but are articulating, single-unit figures. Notably, Lego is also trending in this direction with its characters as new kits are released, potentially impacting consumer product differentiation.

Lego is the inarguable leader with respect to high-quality precision bricks that are small in size, such that many pieces are needed to construct replica objects and a wide variety of designs. Mega Bloks produces many specialty pieces that are designed to replace several Lego bricks needed to construct a similar item or concept. Brite Briks pushes the single-unit concept even further by manufacturing a wide variety of kit components that are more representative of the "pop bead" than a construction toy. This is largely attributable to Brite Briks' focus on the segment populated by girls in the range of 4 to 10 years of age.

Consumer complaints related to Mega Bloks coalesce on the problem of the units not fitting together well or not fitting together tightly enough to maintain the integrity of the structures consumers build.

Lego experiences robust brand equity. Lego fans are typically purists—not accepting substitutes—and loyalists, continuing to buy Lego bricks and kits well into adulthood. Mega Bloks has suffered from bad press about their mishandling of the recalls of the Magnetix and Magnaman toys.

In addition, many Magnetix and Magnaman magnet-based toys produced by Brite Briks have been recalled as hazardous to small children (Morgenson, 2007). The media reported that Brite Briks was wholly uncooperative with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, delaying recalls and aggressive communication of the dangers to children. One toddler died and other children required complicated intestinal surgeries and long hospital stays (Morgenson, 2007). Instead, the company focused on a product redesign rather than ensuring that defective magnet-based toys were removed from retail shelves. While Mega Brands raised the recommended minimum age to 6 years, additional precautions could have been added to the packaging (Morgenson, 2007).

Mega Bloks was sued over the quite blatant use of the interlocking brick system that Lego had trademarked. But higher courts in Canada and the European Union permitted Mega Bloks to continue using the design. Meanwhile, Lego's bricks patent expired. Attentive consumers learned that Mega Bloks acquired the Rose Art company, which was the manufacturer of the Magnaflix and MagnaMan toys that were recalled. This association lowered sales of Rose Art products, thereby further opening the way for Brite Briks to pursue the young girls segment.