Popularity and Growth of Parental Advice Market
- After it was released in 1946, Dr. Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Childcare was the second-bestselling book (behind the Bible) for more than 52 years.
- Parents today are feeling increasing anxiety over economic concerns and a lack of time to rear their children; this leads to more interest in parental advice.
- From 2016-2018, more than $300 million was invested into startups in the parental marketplace, many of which are involved in digital products aimed at Millennials in particular.
- From 2013-2019, the "new mom economy", which includes products, services, apps, and gadgets for new mothers, saw $500 million in investments into startups.
- The overall size of the "new mom economy" was calculated by Forbes to be $46 billion in 2019.
Advice Channels
- Millennial dads in particular are using YouTube for parental advice; 86 percent of them have done so.
- 97 percent of Millennials find social media to be helpful for parental advice.
Kinedu
- Kinedu: Baby Developmental Activities & Milestones is the ranked as the 11th most-downloaded Android parental activity app in the U.K. and the 12th most-downloaded one in the U.S.
- Kinedu is designed for children between the ages of 0-4 and includes a wide range of activities for parents to guide them through, including "physical, linguistic, cognitive, and social-emotional" development.
- More than 5 million parents have downloaded Kinedu since it came out in 2013.
- On iOS, Kinedu had ~50,000 downloads last month and an estimated revenue of $100,000 for that time period.
- On Android, Kinedu had ~300,000 downloads last month and an estimated revenue of $50,000.
Summary of Early Findings in Relation to Goals
The first hour of research involved outlining the project to determine if the requested information is available. After a high-level search, information related to the size of the parental product and general advice market was identified; however, it is generally for the global market and not specific to the U.S. or the U.K. This research can be continued with a focus on identifying the size of the parental advice market in particular, with a focus on those regions.
Statistics related to where parents are getting advice from is available (some of which was provided); this research can also be continued to demonstrate what digital channels parents are accessing.
To demonstrate the potential market size for Devie, the highest-ranking parental activity or advice app in the U.S. and the U.K. was identified and profiled to show the number of users and estimated revenue. Other parenting apps scoring higher in the list are related to monitoring screentime, location, or tracking pregnancies and were thus not selected for this purpose. Additional apps similar to Devie can be profiled, with a focus on those that relate to behavioral issues for children 0-5.
Based on our early findings, we recommend the following next steps to help provide a fuller understanding of the digital parental advice market: