Licensing is Everywhere: Examples of Licensed Products

When consumers purchase products online or in a retailstore, they usually assume that the products are  the ideas of their manufacturers ordistributors.  This is often not thecase.  Instead, manufacturers license productsfrom inventors and market them to their established target markets.  Product licensing benefits manufacturers in anumber of ways including reducing research and development costs, utilizingexcess manufacturing capacity and personnel capacity, and giving themanufacturer the ability to introduce more new products in a shorter amount oftime.  Licensed products are all aroundus; here are some examples of product licensing that you may have come acrossrecently.

Toys

Licensingis very popular in the toy industry, because it allows toy manufacturers tocome out with many new toys each year. Even toys based on popular movies and television shows are licensed fromtheir inventors.  You may see licensedtoys from Batman Begins, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Spongebob Squarepants, andShrek at your favorite department store or toy store.

Board Games

Board games from popular companies such as Hasbro are oftenlicensed from their creators.  This hasseveral advantages for board game companies. They can introduce new games to the market more quickly than theircompetitors and they can also cut research and development costs since boardgame creators usually do their own testing and prototype development.  Board game creators benefit from licensingbecause they are not forced to deal with marketing and distributing the gamesthey have created.  This leaves more timefor creating and testing new games that can be licensed to other manufacturersin the future.  Chances are that many ofthe board games in your home or local recreation center are licensed.

Action Figures

Action figures are usually based off of movie and televisioncharacters.  Good examples are Superman,Spiderman, Batman, He-Man, and GI Joe. Most of these action figures are licensed and distributed bymanufacturing companies with a wide market reach and excellent manufacturingcapacity.  This gives product creatorsthe time to create new products instead of spending time figuring out how tomarket and distribute products they have already created.  Product licensing also benefits action figuremanufacturers.  These manufacturers areable to capitalize on the popularity of movies and television shows in order tomake more sales.  Licensing also makes itpossible for manufacturers to introduce these action figures without having tospend a lot of money on testing and developing the products in house. 

Video Games

Video game manufacturers also take advantage of licensingwhen creating video games for the child and adult gaming markets.  It is much easier to sell video games whenthey contain recognizable characters from movies, television shows, comics, andcartoons, so video game manufacturers will often license popular characters anduse them in new video game offerings. This gives the manufacturer an edge in marketing and selling their newvideo games to both children and adults.

Licensed products are all around us in the marketplace andprovide excellent forms of education and entertainment.  The best part about these licensed productsis that everyone involved wins.  Creatorsare compensated for their products, manufacturers are able to cut costs andremain competitive, and end users are able to continue buying new products forentertainment and educational purposes.