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AP Business Case Study · Unit 2, Task 3

LEGO Friends: Four Years of Research Behind One Toy Line

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Unit 2 · Market Research

A real-company case study for Unit 2, Task 3 of AP Business with Personal Finance, written in the same format as the course's business cases. Read the case, answer each question on your own, then open the sample answers to check your thinking. Facts are current as of October 2026, and every source is listed at the bottom.

The Case

Unit & taskUnit 2, Task 3: Market Research
Topic2.3
Key peopleJørgen Vig Knudstorp (President and CEO of the LEGO Group when LEGO Friends launched in 2012); Elena Catón (Researcher who studied the girls’ market for LEGO in 1997); Fenella Charity (Creative lead for LEGO Friends during the 2023 relaunch)
Case years1997–2026 · Evaluation case
Key questionHow did the LEGO Group use market research to design LEGO Friends for girls, and how did new research shape the line when critics and customers asked for change?
Business Canvas componentsCustomer, Product
Snapshot
  • Business: The LEGO Group, maker of LEGO construction toys; LEGO Friends is one of its product themes
  • Industry: Toys
  • Founded: 1932, Billund, Denmark, by Ole Kirk Kristiansen
  • Headquarters: Billund, Denmark
  • Ownership/Status: Privately held, family-owned company
  • Product line in this case: LEGO Friends (launched 2012; new generation of characters in 2023)

The Missing Half

The LEGO Group, a family-owned toy company founded in Billund, Denmark, in 1932, built its business on plastic bricks that snap together. For years, though, it struggled with one group of customers: girls. In 1997, researcher Elena Catón studied the girls’ market for LEGO. As she later recalled on the company’s own podcast, her research showed that boys and girls both used LEGO until about age eight, but after that boys stayed with the brand while girls dropped away. LEGO tried products aimed at girls, including a line called Scala, but Catón said Scala was not a successful brand overall, and news coverage in 2011 noted that each of LEGO’s earlier girl-focused efforts had floundered. In late 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that LEGO’s revenue had risen 105% since 2006, yet CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp said the company still wanted to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children.”

Watching Girls Play, Then Building for Them

Instead of guessing what girls wanted, LEGO went to study them. LEGO later said Friends grew out of four years of in-depth, anthropology-style research with thousands of girls and their parents in many countries. In other words, researchers studied real girls and their families to learn how girls actually played. According to news coverage of the launch, one key observation was that many boys finished a model before they started playing with it, while many girls began playing with the parts they had built long before the model was done. LEGO said the research also showed that girls wanted more realistic details and accessories, chances to care for animals, stories about friendship, building interiors, and role-play.

LEGO used those findings to make specific product decisions. LEGO Friends launched at the beginning of 2012 with five main characters — Mia, Olivia, Emma, Andrea, and Stephanie — who lived in a made-up town called Heartlake City. Instead of the classic blocky minifigure, the sets used a new, more detailed and realistic figure called the mini-doll. The color palette added pinks, purples, and pale greens and blues. Sets such as a city café, a dream house, an inventor’s workshop, and a puppy house came with their pieces packed in separate bags, so kids could start playing before the whole model was finished. Knudstorp called Friends the company’s most important strategic launch in a decade.

Results and Criticism

The launch worked commercially. LEGO’s annual report for 2012 said attracting more girls had been a challenge, but Friends had performed considerably above expectations, and demand was so strong that the company could not fully meet it. The next year, LEGO reported that Friends was one of the two themes that added the most to its sales growth. Not everyone cheered. A writer for the website Jezebel was skeptical, suggesting that an ad showing girls building with ordinary LEGO bricks would have been cheaper. A neuroscientist who wrote the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain said she could put up with color-coding, ponies, and hairdressers, at least for now, if they got girls playing with LEGO. LEGO faced fresh criticism in 2014, when a 7-year-old girl’s handwritten letter complaining that LEGO had many more boy figures than girl figures went viral. Time noted that she was not excited about the Friends line, with its pink-clad figures who got their hair done and made cupcakes. That year LEGO released a Research Institute set with three female scientists, an idea proposed on its LEGO Ideas fan website.

Researching Again

As LEGO Friends approached its tenth anniversary, its design team decided to rethink the theme. Creative lead Fenella Charity said the team began pitching the idea to company leaders in February 2020 and that a new foundational study was needed to get the project started. LEGO also ran its Play Well Study 2022, a 20-minute online survey of 24,593 children ages 5 to 12 and 32,781 parents in 35 countries (see Exhibit 1). The team tested the new lineup with kids, including boys, and read letters from fans; one girl with a limb difference asked for mini-dolls that represented her. In October 2022, LEGO announced a new generation of LEGO Friends, available January 1, 2023, with eight main characters, five girls and three boys, representing multiple skin tones, cultures, physical and non-visible disabilities, and neurodiversity. LEGO also worked with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media on the TV storylines. Even so, the team said girls remained the theme’s core audience.

Where Things Stand

In July 2025, LEGO announced its first live-action TV project, a LEGO Friends musical special set in Heartlake City. In October 2026, LEGO’s official YouTube channel posted a trailer for LEGO Friends: Heartlake the Musical, announcing a YouTube premiere on October 16 and saying the special was coming to YouTube and Netflix. More than a decade after its launch, LEGO Friends shows how market research can lower the risk of a new product, and why a business has to keep listening as its customers and their expectations change.

Exhibit 1: Selected results from the LEGO Play Well Study 2022
Statement (paraphrased)Group surveyedShare who agreed
There are not enough toys with characters that represent meChildren73%
I would like more toys with characters who look like meChildren80%
I care about everyone being treated equallyChildren91%
It is important to discuss the unique individualities between us allParents97%
Play and toys can help children learn about diversityParents84%

Source: The LEGO Group press release, Oct. 27, 2022. Online survey of 24,593 children ages 5–12 and 32,781 parents in 35 countries, conducted in early 2022.

Reading Questions

These are the same for every case. They check that you caught the basics before you analyze.

1. Which business does this case feature, and what product or service does it provide?
The case features the LEGO Group, a family-owned toy company founded in Billund, Denmark, in 1932, which makes LEGO construction toys. It focuses on LEGO Friends, a line of building sets launched in 2012 for girls, with mini-doll figures, characters who live in the made-up town of Heartlake City, and later TV series and a live-action musical special.
2. Who are the key people named in the case, and what roles do they play? Which other stakeholders — individuals or groups — have an interest in the business?
Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was the LEGO Group’s president and CEO when Friends launched and wanted to reach girls, the other half of the world’s children. Elena Catón researched the girls’ market for LEGO in 1997. Fenella Charity was the creative lead for LEGO Friends who helped lead the 2023 relaunch. Other stakeholders include girls and boys who play with LEGO, parents who buy the sets, critics and writers who questioned the line’s approach, the 7-year-old letter writer and other fans who wrote to LEGO, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, LEGO’s designers and owners, and retailers that sell the sets.
3. Identify an opportunity and/or a challenge the business faces in this case.
Opportunity: girls were a large group of customers LEGO had struggled to reach, since research showed girls drifted away from LEGO after about age eight; Friends performed considerably above expectations in 2012. Challenge: some critics and fans questioned the line’s pink-heavy look and traditional themes such as hairdressers and cupcakes, and a viral 2014 letter complained that LEGO had far more boy figures than girl figures, so LEGO had to keep its core audience of girls while making the theme feel more inclusive, which led to the 2023 relaunch.

Practice Questions

These apply the Unit 2 concepts from Task 3 to the case, in the style of AP free-response prompts.

1. Explain why the LEGO Group conducted years of market research before launching LEGO Friends. Use evidence from the case.Topic 2.3 · LO 2.3.A
LEGO conducted market research to reduce the risk of another expensive failure. Earlier girl-focused products such as Scala had not succeeded, and research from 1997 showed girls drifted away from LEGO after about age eight, so the company knew it did not understand what older girls wanted. Four years of observing and talking with thousands of girls and their parents replaced guesses with evidence: girls liked to pause and play while building and wanted realistic details, animals, friendship stories, and interiors. That evidence led to specific product decisions, such as the mini-doll, Heartlake City, and pieces packed in separate bags, and because the product fit what customers wanted, Friends performed considerably above expectations in 2012.
2. Write a testable business hypothesis that LEGO’s researchers could have used about how girls play with building sets. Then describe a primary research method LEGO could use to test it, and identify evidence in the case that supports the hypothesis.Topic 2.3 · LO 2.3.C
Hypothesis: “At least half of girls ages 6 to 10 who are given a new building set will stop to play with it before the model is finished.” It is testable because it names a specific group, a behavior, and a measurable result. LEGO could test it with observation: researchers watch girls building in their homes (or run an experiment comparing a set packed in separate bags with a set packed in one bag) and record what share of girls stop to play partway through. Observation is strong evidence because it measures what children actually do rather than what they say. Evidence in the case is consistent with the hypothesis: news coverage of the launch reported that LEGO’s researchers saw girls pause partway through to play as they built, which is why Friends sets came with pieces in separate bags.
3. Use Exhibit 1. (a) Identify the type of chart that would best display these five results, and explain why. (b) A small toy startup reads LEGO’s published survey results. Explain whether the results are primary or secondary research for the startup, and describe one limitation of using them.Topic 2.3 · LO 2.3.B, 2.3.D
(a) A bar chart is best, with one bar per statement (73%, 80%, 91%, 97%, and 84%), because it compares separate categories side by side. A pie chart would be wrong because the percentages are not parts of one whole; they come from different questions and add up to far more than 100%. (b) For LEGO, the Play Well Study is primary research because LEGO collected it for its own questions. For the startup, it is secondary research, because the information was collected and published by someone else. It is fast and free, and it covers a huge sample of 24,593 children and 32,781 parents, but it may not fit the startup’s exact question or customers: it surveyed children ages 5 to 12 across 35 countries about toys in general, so the startup would still need its own primary research, such as interviews or a test of a prototype, with its own target customers.

Discussion Questions

Talk these through with a partner or your class. There's more than one good answer, so back yours up with evidence from the case.

  1. LEGO’s research said girls wanted interiors, animals, friendship, and role-play. Were the Friends product decisions a smart response to the data, a reinforcement of stereotypes, or both?
  2. Why might what children say in a survey differ from what they do while playing? Which kind of evidence should a company trust more, and why?
  3. In the 2022 survey, 73% of children said there were not enough toys with characters that represented them. How did that finding show up in the 2023 relaunch?
  4. Which research input do you think mattered most to the 2023 relaunch? Defend your choice with evidence: (a) the Play Well Study survey, (b) testing the new lineup with kids, (c) letters from fans, or (d) working with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
  5. If LEGO wanted to know whether boys would buy the new Friends sets, what hypothesis would you write and what primary research would you recommend?

Application Activity

Write a mini research plan for your Business Canvas product. Include (1) one secondary source you could use to check whether the market is large enough, (2) one testable hypothesis about your target customers, (3) a primary research method to test it, such as a survey, interviews, or an observation, and (4) the type of chart you would use to show the results and why.

Key Takeaways

  • Market research lowers the risk of a new product. After earlier girl-focused products struggled, LEGO spent four years observing and talking with girls and parents, and specific findings, such as girls pausing to play mid-build, led to specific product decisions.
  • Primary and secondary research work together. Observation, kid testing, and LEGO’s own survey were primary research for LEGO, while earlier studies and published results serve as secondary research, and one company’s primary research becomes secondary research for anyone else who reads it.
  • Research is never finished. Criticism and changing expectations led LEGO to collect new data in 2022, and survey results like those in Exhibit 1 are easiest to interpret when shown in a bar chart that compares categories.

Use it in your Business Canvas Project

Like LEGO, test your Business Canvas idea with evidence before you build it: write a testable hypothesis about your target customer, collect primary data to test it, and present the results in an appropriate chart to support your product decisions.

For Teachers

Opening activity: Take a quick show-of-hands poll: Who played with LEGO or another building toy at age 6? Who still did at age 10? Ask students why some kids stop playing with a toy as they get older, and how a company could find out the real reasons instead of guessing. Tell them the case shows how one toy company tried to answer that question.

Tip: “Print case” prints the case and all questions with the sample answers hidden, so it works as a student handout.

Sources

  1. Do Girls Need Their Own Legos? (reporting on Bloomberg Businessweek’s ‘Lego Is for Girls’), HuffPost, 2011-12-16
  2. Bits N’ Bricks, Season 1, Episode 7: LEGO Friends (feature and transcript), The LEGO Group, 2021-01-20
  3. The LEGO Group Annual Report 2012, The LEGO Group, 2013
  4. The LEGO Group Annual Report 2013, The LEGO Group, 2014
  5. Soon There Will Be Female Scientist LEGOs, Time (Charlotte Alter), 2014-06-04
  6. LEGO Friends celebrates its 10 years of building friendships and future creators, The LEGO Group (newsroom), 2022-01-01
  7. Friendship re-imagined: The LEGO Group reveals a new generation of LEGO Friends, The LEGO Group (press release), 2022-10-27
  8. Interview with the Friends relaunch team, Brickset, 2022-10-27
  9. Kenny Ortega named EP for LEGO Friends live-action musical, The LEGO Group (newsroom), 2025-07-08
  10. LEGO Friends: Heartlake the Musical trailer (premieres October 16), LEGO (official YouTube channel), 2026-10-09
All Case Studies Review Unit 2 Practice Questions

This case was written for educational use from the public sources listed above. LEGO did not review it and is not affiliated with this site; company names are trademarks of their owners. This resource is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by College Board.