NeoPets Practices and Its Success - Case Study Example

The Case Study of Neo Pets Outline: This paper is a case study on Neopets. In this case study some important questions and answers, which may help inthe growth of the neopets gaming solution are discussed. It was started by two college students, namely, Adam Powell and Donna Williams in the year 1997 and they launched the neopets website in the year 1999. Later a market research company namely Dohring, Inc. bought the concept from them. (Neopets, 2009). The case Study Neo: Answer to Question 1: In the past, we’ve seen many types of children’s products, ranging from Ninja turtles to Hula Hoops that have turned out to be fads. How do you think NeoPets can prevent its concept from becoming a fad? Most of the children’s products will last only for a short period in the particular market, thereafter they will be out of the market or in other words, they will become fad. That is it will be a temporary trend to use a particular product. There are some children’s products like Ninja turtles and Hula Hoops which did not run for a long period. In this era, there is an increase in the number of people who are interested in playing games, particularly males in the age group of around 20. So the company should consider the adults also while designing the games, so that it can be there in the market for a long period. Though Neopets was started as an online gaming solution, later it started its offline operation also. (Chapter 16, Marketing globally). The company is having a business strategy, which can be changed as and when required and ensures that its products are not becoming fad. And also the customers or the users should not get bored with the product. If so the product will soon become fad. “A lot of goods do not become fad because they maintain their usefulness for longer periods of time, and people tend not to become bored with them.” (Bergman, (n.d)). Answer to Question2: Although NeoPets has been successful thus far in gaining members by word of mouth, should it turn to some more proactive promotion? If so, what should it be? It is a commonly known business fact that, the mouth-to-mouth advertisement by the satisfied customers is the best and inexpensive advertisement. Even then, the organization can test other methods of advertising. Advertising in the internet will have more response. The internet usage among the adults has increased, so the company can give advertisement about their products in the internet rather than in television. The company can also place advertisements in front of the primary and secondary schools. That will attract the students to NeoPets. And also, it can conduct marketing campaigns exclusively targeting the children. It is a fact that the children have the great influence in the spending habits of their parents. Answer to Question 3: What country-to-country differences in acceptability of NeoPets might exist? How might NeoPets deal with them? NeoPets has adopted world wide operations focused on international clients. Language is the main challenge that restricts the international acceptability of computer games. NeoPets arranged web connections to the selected 10 languages which account for 89.9% of online connections worldwide. In order to reduce the language restrictions and facilitating the communication between these languages, translation facility is also arranged in the game site. As a virtual pet website, NeoPets has faced cross cultural issues in its online games. In the website, NeoPets allowed selection of virtual pets of their choice. It arranged national versions of the website for localizing the website content in the most appropriate manner. It is through identifying the email address of the viewers. Religious and political postings are not allowed in NeoPets website. A parent group in Australia criticized the Mc Donald’s game on the ground of promotion of gambling through giving prizes on the basis of chance. In order to avoid this criticism, NeoPets removed gambling-based games from its Australian version website. In USA, the policies of NeoPets relating to political and religious talk and postings bans on the NeoPets site is criticized by communities of Christian, Jewish and wiccan NeoPets clients. (Wingfield, 2005). For avoiding the criticism from the US religious communities, NeoPets would have to allow religious talks in the US version. In order to overcome the criticisms on the ground of promoting gambling behavior in children, NeoPets should eliminate the gambling-based games in its websites. Answer to Question 4: Examine each of the criticisms about NeoPets’ practices. What should NeoPets and regulatory agencies do about each of them? Major criticism faced by NeoPets is related to its advertisements focused on children. Children are not capable of identifying the distinction between advertising and entertainment. Critics point out that NeoPets do not clearly label its advertising contents present in their entertainment games. NeoPets’ online games sponsored by fast-food brands, snacks and other kid-targeted product groups present their content without the label of advertising. In the view of American Psychological Association, children below the age of 9 will lack ability to distinguish the ads from entertainment. Those below the age of 12 will be in difficulty to make intelligent purchasing decisions. Critics point out that overabundance of junk food ads in NeoPets website is contributing to obesity among the children. The habit of playing videogames among the children will affect their studies and other extracurricular activities. Even though there exist precautions for restricting the misuse of website, hackers can have influence on these contents. Immersive advertising and gambling based games should affect the behavior formation in children badly by divulging children to gambling. (Chapter 16, Marketing Globally). “Immersive advertising is a key factor that has helped to lead their success over other online advertising firms, that just used traditional banner and pop up advertisements.” (NeoPets case analysis, 2008). NeoPets states that when compared to other websites, it does not allow ads on the homepage and not allow pop up ads also. In case of Lucky Charms game, there is a disclaimer on the starting page, stating that the game is an ad. But this message is not present within the game. NeoPets would have to label its advertising contents clearly from the entertainers. Regulatory agencies would have to implement laws and regulations prohibiting the anti-social activities in the game site such as gambling. The immersive adverting of junk food ads also would have to be controlled from the online games focused on children. Answer to Question 5: NeoPets depends mainly on a youth market. Can it extend its concept to an adult market? If so, how? In the online game business, along with geographic diversity, demographic diversity is also present. There is massive acceptance of online games among the adult males. Multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) like Ever Quest attained enormous attention among the viewers. “Services like Yahoo Games, MSN Zone and Pogo attract tens of millions of users and at any given time will have 150,000 to 200,000 simultaneous players each. On top of that, for many services over 50% of their users are adult females, a demographic that has historically shunned video games.” (Research and markets, 2009) In the internet game field, there exists potential opportunity in the adult market also. In order to exploit this opportunity, NeoPets should adopt adult based online games. It will help to attract the advertisers on a wide base. NeoPets can develop videogames, cell phone games and feature films attractive and entertaining to the adult viewers in its virtual menagerie. Adult focused online games will be more profitable as there is growing acceptance of online games among the adult viewers. Computer animated movies focusing on adult education and information can be arranged in a separate version of NeoPets. Stability in growth rate can be ensured through this transition. Action games such as fighting games, first person shooters etc can be adopted by NeoPets. Reference Bergman, Margo. (n.d). When a fad ends: An agent – based model of imitative behavior: Discussion. Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.uh.edu/margo/paper.pdf Chapter 16: Marketing globally. NeoPets. (Provided by the customer). Chapter 16: Marketing globally. NeoPets. (Provided by the student). Neopets. (2009). Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.neopets.com/aboutus.phtml NeoPets case analysis. (2008). Critically Thought. Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.criticallythought.com/ Research and markets: Online games growing on a global scale and attracting broader range of demographics than traditional video game industry. (2009). Business Wire. Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040913005551&newsLang=en Wingfield, Nick. (2005). Webs addictive Neopets are ready for big career leap. Commercial Alert. Retrieved March 2, 2009 from http://www.commercialalert.org/news/featured-in/2005/02/webs-addictive-neopets-are-ready-for-big-career-leap Read More