I just read an interesting article in The New York Times that said Disney is redesigning its Disney Store in shopping malls to make the stores more like entertainment centers. Instead of displaying rows of Disney toys, the Disney stores will provide an experiential shopping event for children. In fact, Disney might even rebrand its Disney Store as Imagination Park. Disney is making the change hoping that
children [will] clamor to visit the stores and stay longer, perhaps bolstering sales as a result.
To support the change, Jim Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide, says that
the world does not need another place to sell Disney merchandise — this only works if it’s an experience.
When a child goes into one of the new Disney stores, Fielding wants the child’s shopping experience to be “the best 30 minutes of a child’s day.” And what an experience those thirty minutes will be! In each store,
theaters will allow children to watch film clips of their own selection, participate in karaoke contests or chat live with Disney Channel stars via satellite. Computer chips embedded in packaging will activate hidden features. Walk by a “magic mirror” while holding a Princess tiara, for instance, and Cinderella might appear and say something to you.
It’s your birthday? With the push of a button, eight 13-foot-tall Lucite trees will crackle with video-projected fireworks and sound. There will be a scent component; if a clip from Disney’s coming “A Christmas Carol” is playing in the theater, the whole store might suddenly be made to smell like a Christmas tree.
The Disney board has already approved the concept for the new Disney stores. So now Disney will spend $1 million on each of its 340 stores in the U.S. and Europe to renovate them. Plus Disney will open new Disney stores, including a possible flagship store in Times Square.
Most of the chain toy stores in the malls have gone out of business because of the recession. Fielding expects the new Disney stores to be the only toy stores left in the malls. So Disney and its Disney toys will face no competition. Besides, Fielding thinks that “[e]very mall in America is desperate for newness and freshness.”
I have a few problems with Disney’s new Disney Store concept. First, Disney is using the stores to manipulate small children who haven’t developed the critical-thinking skills to know that they’re being manipulated. To me, the new Disney stores are disguised ads for Disney products, including new movies. Even the Disney marketers admit that when they talk about showing clips in the theater promoting “A Christmas Carol” and also giving off the smell of Christmas trees to increase the kids’ desire to see the movie.
The whole new Disney Store “experience” is simply a vehicle for selling Disney toys and other products. Disney’s advertising tactics prey on little kids.
Second, Disney is turning a new generation of children into consumers. In fact, Fielding’s statement that the time spent in a new Disney store will be “the best 30 minutes of a child’s day” shows how twisted his values are. The “best 30 minutes”? Come on! If time spent in a Disney store are the best half hour in a kid’s day, both the kid and his or her parents have a problem with the quality of their lives. Wouldn’t the family be better off visiting a museum or hiking or perhaps spending quality time around the table?
Third, if the new Disney stores are going to be in all the malls, those stores will quickly become just another cookie-cutter fixture in a mall. What might have been a thrilling new concept will become dull and stale through overexposure. After all, cookie-cutter stores are what malls specialize in.
Fifth, Disney doesn’t care a fig about the people who buy from their stores. Last year Disney took in $30 billion worldwide. All the profits left the towns and cities where people bought the merchandise and went to Disney corporate. To Disney, citizens of towns and cities are simply faceless “consumers” whose role in life is to buy Disney products to drive up Disney profits. Disney doesn’t consider its customers as real people.
Disney has taken over the lives of our children — to our children’s detriment. What do you think about the new Disney stores?
By the way, you can read the entire Disney article here.
Tags: Disney, Disney store, Disney toys
Wow! How interesting! What happens when these kids get home with their movies and there is so smell? How do you explain that to a three or four year old? (What disapointment to once eager kids!)
Why do we need another Disney store? There is Disney Land, Disney World and the web.
I was slightly shocked when I read this article. It made me wonder if the writer even has children or remembers being a child. The very idea that Disney is turning our children into consumers is ludicrous! Children are consumers even at birth. New toys, furniture, diapers, formula, and bottles are only a few of the items that parents accumulate before the baby even arrives home. Whether they’re in Walmart or Disney that won’t change.
Disney stores allow my children to have the magic of Disney without the high cost of a trip to their resort as well as entertaining them during an otherwise boring shopping trip. I am capable of walking out of a store without buying everything. I intend to encourage my children to use their imaginations and dream big. It’s part of the joy of being a child. They can visit the museums when they’re too old to fit in the princess gowns.