EOC: Big

Big is a film about a 13-year-old boy who takes on a 30-year-old man’s body (Tom Hanks) for some period of time. In the film, he becomes a toy tester for a company called MacMillan toys. He becomes very popular within his company as his boss’s favorite employees. His coworkers, however, find it difficult to like him because of his quick promotion in the company. These employees do not realize or understand that he is really a 13-year-old boy.

At the toy company, toys and toy ideas are tested on children as well as adults. Several research methods are demonstrated in the film. The most obvious being focus groups. The focus group consists of many children who get to play with toys and express their ideas and opinions about them. Tom Hanks’ character becomes the most valued opinion because he still thinks like a kid. Much product research is also conducted, as well as longitudinal research. This takes ideas from children and the company’s employees and builds them, eventually creating a toy to go into production. The company uses demographic selection and other good research techniques but the information they supplied was used in the wrong ways. They had lots of great statistics that were ineffective for designing childrens' toys. Brainstorming is another effective research method used in the film. By simply sampling prototype toys in a conference room, bigger and better ideas are put into work.

The gist of the film encourages adults not to lose touch with their child-like qualities. See, by becoming working adults, many of the employees get so into their jobs and earning money that they lose sight of what their job actually is. At the toy company, many employees focus on research results and studies and surveys of what people want – they forget that a toy is just supposed to be fun to play with. The focus group is the best research method for a toy company, in my opinion.