Week 3

Toys R Us is classified under Category Killer.

The assortment for Toys R Us are toys that caters for children and adults.

From our observations, we feel that the challenges for Toys R Us are:

1. Limited customer service resources - We do not see sales personnel on the sales floor assisting customers throughout the shopping process. We feel that this would pose as a threat to Toys R Us as any similar competitor in the market can improve on this aspect and catch up or overtake them.

Recommendations

We feel that as advising customers is an essential part of the job, staff should be friendly and approachable with a basic knowledge of children’s play for various age groups. This should cover exploratory, constructive, energetic, modeling, pretend, social and skillful play. It is also important to have a genuine love of children, endless patience, tolerance, energy and a sense of humour.

In US and the UK, there are other toy stores providing fierce competition and they are The Entertainer, Hamleys and the Early Learning Centre. Supermarkets also encroach on the sector, with Asda and Tesco strong in toys and games while some department stores also have major stocks of toys, eg House of Fraser and John Lewis.


2. Another challenge that we feel is threatening Toys R Us is the ability to maintain its brand image across all its channels of distribution and whether they can sustain their position as the leader in the toy industry.