Report: Most Toy Shoppers Know What and From Where They Will Buy

According to Toy Purchase Decisions, the latest report from The NPD Group, the majority of toy buyers know what toy they will buy and at what store. The report finds that 62 percent of toy purchases are planned and more than three-quarters of buyers (77 percent) who made a planned purchase said they knew specifically where they wanted to shop.

If a specific toy was unavailable at a store, 42 percent of toy buyers would look for that toy at a different store and 9 percent would look online to purchase it. Only 22 percent of buyers said they would look for a different product in the same store.
For those purchases that were not planned (38 percent), 70 percent of the unplanned purchases were impulse buys. The other 30 percent of purchases were made because either the buyer was coerced into the purchase by a child (21 percent), or the buyer remembered they needed to buy a toy when they were in the store (9 percent).
According to the report, planned purchases result in higher price points than unplanned purchases; the average price of planned purchases is 1.5 times higher than unplanned.  Building sets and youth electronics, categories with the highest price points, are two of the categories most likely to be planned.

About the author

Jackie Breyer

Jackie Breyer

Jackie Breyer is the vice president of Adventure Media & Events, and group publisher of The Toy Book, The Toy Insider, and The Pop Insider. She has been reporting on retail and toy industry trends for more than 20 years. Jackie has been featured in the Netflix series The Toys That Made Us, The History Channel’s The Toys That Built America, and Nat Geo’s The ’80s Top 10: Toys, as well as The TODAY show, CNBC's Power Lunch, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and more. Jackie is the 2012 recipient of the Wonder Woman in Toys, Licensing & Entertainment Award in the field of Journalism & Social Media. A true ’80s kid, Jackie is a fan of Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Super Mario, Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Archie Comics. Her first Cabbage Patch Kid was named Cecily Aretha. She still has her charm necklace, and her Garbage Pail Kid card collection is bigger than yours. Jackie has successfully trained her kids Lena and Henry to be Mario Kart experts. You can follow her on social media @jackiebreyer and connect with her on LinkedIn.

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