Keywords

1 Introduction

As the living standard is significantly improved due to economic development, it has been the wish of all parents to give children happy childhood. Parents endeavor to create the children with a carefree environment and atmosphere and provide them with the best conditions in learning and entertainment, while the purchase of toys is an important link to reach the target. As shown by Report for Toys and Baby Supplies Industry Development in China 2017 published at the 9th Toys and Baby Supplies Industry in China by Liang Mei: In 2016, the national gross imports of toys was USD 1.069 billion, witnessing a growth rate by 22.96% compared that of 2015 [1]. It can be seen that the increase of market demand on toys increases quickly. The toy has abundant connotations, transmits the value and exception of the last generation to the younger generation and tells the acknowledgement and freedom of the young generation to the last generation [2]. When selecting tools, because the child age is young, parents’ selection will lead up. However, the child is actually the host and user of toys, more attention should be paid to the preference of children. Although children often require parents to buy tools, the requirement is unreliable under most conditions [3]. They know how to watch parents’ mood and usually choose toys acceptable for parents, therefore, the independent judgment of parents is especially important. Do parents and children have the same selection and need? What is the difference in standards considered by parents and children when selecting toys? These are topics worth discussing.

Most current researches on the toy selection discuss the scientific selection of toys taking parents as the subject or discuss separating parents and children, only a few conduct the comparative study taking children as the subject. This research focuses on children at 7–9 years old and their parents, obtains the preference of parents and children on toys by the questionnaire and factoring influencing their selections, and expects that the result can provide toy manufacturers with current preference information of parents and children on toys and provide parents with suggestions on the toy selection.

  1. (1)

    What is the reason resulting in differences between parents and children in the toy selection?

  2. (2)

    What is the influence to the toy selection of education background of parents?

  3. (3)

    What are the differences between boys and girls in the toy selection?

  4. (4)

    What is the attitude difference of parents when selecting toys for children of different genders?

2 Literature Review

2.1 Factors Affecting the Toy Selection

There are a lot of factors affecting parents’ selection on toys. Bian Yufang divided these factors into four grades from high to low as per the importance in this paper Factors Influencing Children’s Selection and Purchase of Toys, among which the most important factor is: security of toys and cultivation to children’s skills and creativeness. The attraction and originality of toys rank the second. The child gender ranks the third [4]. As for children, the physiological hormone will influence children’s selection tendency [5]. As for children over 7 years old, because they have completed the sound gender constancy development and established a complete and stable set of gender frame. When selecting toys, the gender stereotype will greatly influence them [6]. In other words, children will tend to choose toys with the gender tendency same to themselves and affirm that a certain type of toys belong to the opposite gender [7]. It is pointed out by other researches that when selecting toys, games and playmates, children tend to behave as per social norms [8].

As shown by the research, the most popular toys among boys are the model toy, electronic toy and pop-up toy; while plush and cloth toys are popular among girls, as well as balls and chesses [9]. As shown by the research, although many parents encourage girls and boys engage in cross-sex activities, they are still limited by traditional norms when selecting toys for children, toys with masculinity for boys and toys with femininity for girls [3].

2.2 Four Different Pleasures

Lionel Tiger has been proposed four different pleasures: Physio-pleasure, Psycho-pleasure, Socio-pleasure and Ideo-pleasure. He explained these four pleasures as follows:

Physio-pleasure::

Bodily pleasures derived from sensory (touch, taste, smell, etc.) organs.

Socio-pleasure::

Socio-pleasures arise from relationships with other people or society as a whole. Social need pleasures avoid discomfort of not being socially accepted.

Psycho-pleasure::

People’s cognitive and emotional reactions. Jordan groups usability as a product property that is connected to psycho-pleasure.Poor usability can cause annoyance, frustration and stress.

Ideo-pleasure::

Pleasures that are connected to people’s values, pleasures that are derived from such as books, music and art. Pleasures that relate to personal aspirations and moral values. (closely related to be/do goals) [10]

3 Research Method

3.1 Research Object and Selection Method

This research takes 18 toys popular in Chinese Mainland as a research object. The selection process of toy samples is divided into 3 steps:

  1. (1)

    Select top 30 best-sold toys on the online shopping platform in Chinese Mainland.

  2. (2)

    Classify them according to four different pleasures proposed by Lionel Tiger.

  3. (3)

    Invite 10 different experts to select 16 most representative toys per person, separately 4 for each pleasure, account the final result and select 16 most representative toys, 4 for each pleasure (considering the gender tendency ratio of toys). The sample selection and grouping results are as follows: Remote control car(male), Big teddy Bear(female), clockwork toy(male), Transformers(male) for Psycho-pleasure; Screaming chicken(male), Silicone toys(female), Fidget spinner(all), Music Box(female) for Physio-pleasure; electric ride on(male), Playhouse(all), Gun(male), Barbie(female) for Socio-pleasure; cosplay clothes(all), Sparkles(female), LEGO(all), Snow globe(female) for Ideo-pleasure.

  4. (4)

    Based on the investigation of 5 6–8 years old children, the social pleasure toy - RichMan board game (all) is added, and the cosplay costume is divided into hero costume (male) and princess costume (female), and finally determine 18 toy samples in the questionnaire. Among all toy samples, the gender tendency of 7 are the male, 7 are the female, and 4 are without obvious gender tendency. (As shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1).

    Fig. 1.
    figure 1

    Process for sample selection

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    Table 1. Corresponding table of toy sample and its gender tendency
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3.2 Research Object and Selection Method

Between two versions, separately for parents and children, A-side is printed with clear and colorful pictures of 18 toy samples mentioned above, B-side is printed with specific questions. The part for parents is set with two basic information questions, separately education background and age, and four major topics: I. Select four favorite toys among all samples that you want to send to your children; II. Give a mark to every toy as per the beautiful shape, comfortable hand feeling, sense of humor, available for playing alone, development of imagination, artistry and suitable for playing together; III. Importance of three additive factors, separately economy, safety and edutainment; IV. the coincidence of meeting child’s vision, helping child’s growth, cultivating child’s independent playing ability and sharing your favorite toy with the child. Choose the score the most suitable for you as per 5-points scale. 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest.

The questionnaire for children is set with one basic information question, separately education background and age, and two major topics: I. select you favorite 4 toys, and rank them as per your preference degree II. the same to it of the second question in parents’ questionnaire, while the word and tone are changed correspondingly for children, words suitable for low-grade children to read and understand are selected. The paper questionnaire is adopted, in order to avoid mutual influence between children and parents, questionnaires for parents and children are printed are separately printed on both sides of A3 paper, which will be filled in separately after being folded. There is no time limit for the filling, and this investigation will not record the name.

3.3 Subjects

The subjects are 120 students and one of their parents from Grade II (6) and (7) of Wuyishan Experimental School. Total 120 questionnaires are released, and 115 are recovered. Among all recovered questionnaires, 108 questionnaires from children are effective, 52 (48%) from boys, and 56 (52%) from girls; 60 questionnaires from parents are effective, 30 (50%) from boys’ parents, and 30 (50%) from girls’ parents. The effective questionnaire both from parents and children are just 57.

4 Analysis and Discussion of the Results

4.1 Reliability and Validity Test

The reliability analysis of the questionnaire is to discuss the internal consistency of each surface of the scale and the impairment of the Cronbach α coefficient of each dimension after single deletion, which is as the reference standard of the topic selection and the reliability of the scale. The analysis of the questionnaire found that: the Cronbach α coefficient is . 748. The corrected total correlation of each element: 654–870, [the α coefficient after deletion] case: 312–659. It is clear that the internal consistency between the topics is higher, and the topic settings are reasonable. The validity analysis shows that the KMO coefficient is. 605, which means high value, and the Sig value is. 000, meeting the great significance. The characteristic value is 1.342, which can explain 69.49% variance of the preset uses. The factor load quantity of each question from .638–.816, intercommunity from .532–.824.

4.2 Influence of Different Parental Education Background on the Different Selection of Toys

To explore the influence of parental education differences on the selection of toys, the parents’ academic qualifications are taken as an independent variable, and the elements to be considered during the selection of toys are taken as a dependent variable. The variance analysis is conducted, and the results are shown in Table 2. It can be seen that the artistic(f = 3.523*) selection of toys of children’s parents of different educational degrees have a significant difference, which is up to .05. After the Scheffe comparison, the score of artistic sense of the parents with undergraduate degree below is significantly larger than that of the parents with undergraduate education. It is visible that parents with the undergraduate degree below have the stronger expectations of the artistic sense of the toys, who also hope that their children accept the edification of art.

Table 2. Influence of parental education differences on the selection of toys
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4.3 Influence of Children’s Gender Differences on the Toy Selection of Parents and Children

To explore the influence of gender differences on the toy selection of parents and children (the used data are the child’s gender, parents’ best selection and the child’s best selection, excluding the selection 2, 3 and 4), the child’s gender is taken as an independent variable, and the results of the child’s selection of toys are shown in Table 3. The selection of boys and girls in the Fidget spinner (t = 4.636***), Gun (t = 6.552***), Transformers (t = 3.638***), Electric ride on (t = 2.732**), Remote-Control Car (t = 6.372***), Hero Clothing (t = 4.344***) have significant differences, showing positive correlation, and the boys have significant preference to these toys compared to girls. In the selection of Music Box (–5.256***), Barbie (–5.373***), Sparkles (–2.331*), Big Teddy Bear (–2.305*), PlayHouse (–2.985**), Snow Globe (–3.190**), Silicone Toys (–5.704***), Princess Costume (–4.518***), there is a significant difference, showing the negative correlation, and the girls have significant preference to these toys compared to boys. From the above results, the sex characteristics of the selection of toys with significant differences of boy and girls are more obvious, which is consistent with the preferences of boy and girls.

Table 3. Effects of gender differences on toy selection
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Parents’ selection of toys did not show significant differences in children’s sex. The sexual orientation of a toy is not a decisive factor when parents choose toys for their children.

4.4 Ranking Results for Toy Selection of Parents and Children

The toy’s preference degree is converted into the integral form (the first selection is 4 points, the second selection is 3, the third selection is 2, and the fourth selection is 1.) to make the ranking table, and the excerpt data is shown in Table 4. The top three toys that boys like best are Guns, and Remote-Control Cars and Fidget Spinner, which are all the toys with significant male characteristics as shown in “Table 3”. The selection of Toy Guns and Remote-Control Cars is consistent with the results of Sang and Wang [3], which belong to models, electric or ejection toys. In the top 3 of the parent-child selection, the boy and his parents had 2 of the same selection, and in the difference item, boys chose the Fidget Spinner and the parents chose LEGO. In the selection of parents, the Gun is followed by the “Fidget Spinner”, and the score gap is only 2 points, which is obvious that selection of parents and boys have a higher consistency.

Table 4. The score rankings of toys selected by parents
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The top three toys that girls like the best are Snow Ball, Silicone Toys and Barbie, which are all toys having significant female characteristics according to “Table 3”. However, the results are biased with the study of Sang and Wang [3], in which the Big Teddy Bear which should be popular with girls ranked only the seventh, while Snow Ball contrary to the texture of the soft and warm plush or cloth toys is the most loved by girls. In the top 3 of the selection, there is no common toy selected both by the girls and the parents, which shows that the selection of parents and girls are less consistent. The girls’ favorite 3 toys appeared in 4, 5 and 6 of the parents’ selection rank list, indicating that parents had a certain understanding of girls’ preferences, while they did not show enough inclusion when buying toys for them compared with boys.

The 3 toys that parents want to buy for the girls most are LEGO, Monopoly and PlayHouses. Although data in “Table 3” show that LEGO and Monopoly do not have a significant gender orientation, the data in “Table 4” show that the points of LEGO (children’s selection) are: Boys 56 points, girls 35 points. The points of Monopoly (children’s selection) are: Boys 41 points, girls 27 points. The points of boys are 50% more than those of girls, showing more obvious male characteristics, indicating that parents want girls to do a number of transgender attempts in the selection of toys. This is a little bit different from the research done by Chen [9]. Regardless of boys and girls, LEGO are the toys preferred by the parents, which embodies the parents’ high attention to the toy education, which is consistent with research results of Sang and Wang [3].

4.5 The Results Comparison of Parents and Children

In the 57 parent-child correspondence questionnaires, the parent-child coincidence number of 4 toys is 128 times without considering the toy preference ranking, and the average coincidence rate is 56.14%. For the favorite toys, the number of questionnaires in which parent-child selection was the same is 16, accounting for 28.07% of the total. And the number of questionnaires in which child’s favorite toys did not appear in the parents’ 4 selections is 20, accounting for 35.09% of the total (As shown in Fig. 2). The toys that were not selected by the parents and selection times were: LEGO x2, Gun x2, Snow Globe x4, Fidget Spinner x4, Barbie x1, Silicone Toys x2, Monopoly x2, PlayHouse x2, Music Box x1, Princess Costume x1.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

A schematic diagram of the selection coincidence degree of 57 parent-child correspondence questionnaires

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This shows that almost half of the toys selected by parents are not children’s favorite, and only less than 30% of them can get their favorite toys from their parents, and nearly 40% of children have trouble getting their favorite toys. After finishing the toys, it is known that the most neglected toys are the Snow Ball and Fidget Spinner. Among them, the Snow Globe reached its mass production in 1905, and the Fidget Spinner was popular in the beginning of the spring of 2017. The one of the two pieces of toys is a classically traditional toy, while the other is the currently popular toy. It can be seen that parents lack of confidence in traditional toys, and lack of sharp insight on the popular toys.

5 Conclusions and Recommendations

Toys are fascinating and everyone enjoys the joy of toys. Children want to simply enjoy happiness, while parents want to use the toy to bring the child the meaning of fun. Whether a parent’s selection of toys makes the child happy depends on the degree of consistency between the parent’s and the child’s selection. This study investigated the selection of toys by questionnaire. This study shows that:

  1. (1)

    The parents with undergraduate degree below have more expectation to the artistic sense of the toy than the parents with bachelor degree or above.

  2. (2)

    The selection of toys of children has significant gender orientation, while the selection of toys of parents for their children does not have a significant gender orientation.

  3. (3)

    Differences exist in the selection of parent and child. The boys’ selection of toys is of higher consistency with that of parent, and the girls’ selection is less consistent with that of parent. Parents encourage girls to try transgender attempts on toys.

  4. (4)

    There are significant differences between parents and children in the selection of toys, and misalignment degree of parents and children on the selection of toys is about 44%.

  5. (5)

    Parents are not concerned about the latest pop toys and lack confidence in traditional toys. The enjoyment classification of toys needs to be further explored, and the classification method selected by this paper is not specifically for toys, but for all products, so that there is a certain ambiguity of some toys in the definition of interest, which did not reflect the expected value in the conclusion analysis.