There are good reasons so many franchises targeting children keep springing up. There are lots of children and lots of doting parents and grandparents willing to spend a huge amount of money on them.

According to a report by market researcher Packaged Facts, U.S. households spend about $120 billion a year on their children for everything from food, clothing and personal-care items to entertainment and educational products and services. And that figure is growing, expected to reach $143 billion in 2010.

Kids themselves have become "consumers in training" these days, and they have a lot of cash to toss around on their own part. Best estimates put direct discretional spending power of the younger set at about $20 billion a year.

Given the huge sums of money driving this market, no wonder there are more than 100 listings under Children’s Products / Education / Services in the directory section of The Franchise Handbook. They run the gamut from sports to child safety to kid-friendly hair salons. But two sectors - educational services and daycare - dominate the field.

Educational services include tutoring, computer training, music and art lessons and similar services. The demand for educational services is tremendous and growing, and its importance is underlined in recent reports from the U.S. Department of Education.

In "Creating Strong Supplemental Educational Services Programs," the second report in the Department of Education’s Innovation in Education series, the agency notes the importance of tutoring for educational success in today’s environment.

The report spells out the case that supplemental educational services franchise owners have been making to their customers and prospective customers for many years. "The commonsense notion that some children need more instructional time than others to master the curriculum is supported by research and theory," the report states. "Studies show that students who continue to struggle in school without intervention compound their learning losses into a larger deficit that is difficult to remediate," it continues. "In contrast, carefully tailored learning interventions can yield quite remarkable and swift progress in overcoming learning obstacles."

While the government report focuses mainly on struggling students who could benefit from supplement educational services, there is robust demand for those services in other quarters as well. Parents frequently seek out additional help for average and even superior students, especially for specific subjects such as mathematics, science and foreign languages.

Demand for computer training is also on the rise, and a number of franchise systems specialize in providing it. From computer classes for toddlers to practical computer skills training for older students and adults, franchise offerings in this segment cover the entire spectrum of demand.

The federal government makes some $2 billion a year available to pay for supplemental educational services to low-income students, underlining the increasingly mainstream status these services have achieved. That raised level of awareness regarding the benefits supplemental educational services provide should contribute to increasingly favorable market conditions for franchised businesses in this field for many years to come.

The educational services industry was the second-largest industry in the U.S. economy in 2006, providing jobs for about 13.3 million workers - about 13.2 million wage and salary workers, and 195,000 self-employed and unpaid family workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

While most jobs in this field are found in elementary and secondary schools, specialized educational services companies, such as those designed to help high school students prepare for college entrance tests and those that help kids as young as pre-school age develop computer skills, account for a growing number.

Child care, which sometimes overlaps with educational services, is another important growth area in the children’s market, according to BLS. "Obtaining affordable, quality child day care, especially for children under five, is a major concern for many parents, particularly in recent years with the rise in families with two working parents," said a BLS spokesman.

"As the need for child day care has increased in the last decade, the child day care services industry began to fill the need of non-relative child care," he added. In the franchise sector of this industry, child care is often combined with educational elements, such as general academic instruction or development of skills in areas such as computers, art and music.

Child day care needs are met in different ways. Care in a child’s home, care in an organized child care center, and care in a provider’s home - known as family child care – are all common arrangements for preschool-aged children.

Older children also may receive child day care services when they are not in school, generally through before- and after-school programs or private summer school programs. With the increasing number of households in which both parents work full time, this industry has been one of the fastest-growing in the U.S. economy, according to BLS.

The industry consists of establishments that provide paid care for infants, toddlers, preschool children, or older children in before- and after-school programs. Two main types of child care make up the child day care services industry: center-based care and family child care.

Formal child day care centers include preschools, child care centers, and Head Start centers. Family child care providers care for children in their home for a fee and are the majority of self-employed workers in this industry. This does not include persons who provide unpaid care in their homes for the children of relatives or friends or occasional babysitters.

The for-profit part of this industry - in which franchises figure prominently - includes centers that operate independently or as part of a local or national company. The number of for-profit establishments has grown rapidly in response to demand for child care services.

Child day care services provided about 807,000 wage and salary jobs in 2006, according to BLS research, many of them through franchised businesses. There were an additional 467,000 self-employed and unpaid family workers in the industry, most of whom were family child care providers, although some were self-employed managers of child care centers.

Opportunities in child day care are found across the country, mirroring the distribution of the population. However, day care centers are less common in rural areas, where there are fewer children to support a separate facility.

Child day care operations vary in size, from the self-employed person caring for a few children in a private home to the large corporate-sponsored center employing a sizable staff. Almost half of all wage and salary jobs in 2006 were located in establishments with fewer than 20 employees. Nearly all establishments have fewer than 50 workers.

There are many unique aspects to running a child care business because of the sensitive nature of the service being provided and the level of trust that exists between the franchise and its customers. But the basics of running a good business still apply.

"We want our families to feel as though our day care center is their home away from home," said the owner of a Houston day care and preschool program, which has two locations. "We want them to feel as though we truly are their extended family."

The most common point of interaction the franchise’s clients have with the business is through face-to-face contact with their children’s teachers. Teachers are instructed to greet each family member by name upon both arrival and departure, the owner said.

"Thereafter, our directors, as well as my partner and I, always make a concerted effort to greet every family by name at every interaction," she explained. "We contact parents by phone throughout the day when the need to do so arises, and we also offer a Web site."

This particular franchise constantly surveys its clients for feedback to make sure they enjoy a positive experience. It conducts annual anonymous surveys of both its teachers and its client families. It also conducts visitor surveys to inquire about their first impressions of the facility.

"We do follow-up phone calls whenever we feel that a family may not be entirely happy with our programs," the owner said. "We then acknowledge their concerns and try to improve wherever we can. While we cannot always make everyone completely happy, at least they feel heard and somewhat validated."

The company maintains efforts to bolster customer experience on several fronts, focusing on communication as the key to making its families feel connected and satisfied. It provides client families with daily information sheets, conducts regular conferences and hosts "meet the teacher" nights.

It also hosts quarterly "parents’ night out" events and an annual family fun day. The aim, said the owner, is "to make sure that each family feels as though their individual needs are being met."

The day care and preschool franchise substitutes the phrase "family experience" for "customer experience" because it better reflects what the business is all about. "Family experience is absolutely essential to the success of our business," the owner stated.

"We are caring for our families’ most precious gifts in life - their children. As a result, it is essential that we demonstrate love and commitment to each entire family. Again, we want them always to feel welcome and appreciated, as you do when ‘coming home.’"

At the end of the day, the customer experience the franchise looks to deliver is aligned with the values to which it is committed. "Positive social relationships are imperative to healthy families," the owner explained. "Ultimately, we want to contribute to building positive relationships with our families so they may lead calmer, more satisfying lives."

The children’s market is being driven by a number of different trends, and they are constantly changing, said marketing consultant Paul Kurnit. For one thing, "Kids are getting older younger," he said.

"We’ve been hearing this in the kid market for the past several years. Until recently, though, other than the declaration of this idea, we have seen little evidence of how or whether this phenomenon is truly at play,' he said.

Kurnit argues that there are now five different addressable targets in the children’s market, and that the newest of those segments, toddlers aged 0-3, is responsive to the idea that today, kids truly are growing older younger.

"This new toddler segment, kids three and under, is a group that is influencing brand and purchase decisions like never before," he said. "Increasingly, they are a group that can be effectively targeted directly."

According to Kurnit’s theory, the other four addressable target groups in the children’s market are preschoolers, aged two to five; kids, aged six to eight; tweens, aged nine to 12; and teens, aged 13 to 15. "There are more dramatic changes in today’s families than we have ever seen before," he said. "These changes are being fueled by kid power and kid influence over mom and dad. Today’s youngest kids are becoming today’s newest targeted markets."

Toddlers are moms represent a "truly dynamic duo," as kids are more brand-aware and parents increasingly accept, permit and fulfill the brand demands that come out of this heightened awareness, he added.

There has been some backlash against the increase in marketing to children that has taken place in recent years. Groups such as the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) have raised questions about its propriety.

"With children either spending or influencing $500 billion worth of purchases, marketing techniques have been turned upside down," said a spokesman for NIMF. "In the past, the most effective way to sell children’s products was through mom and dad. Now the opposite is true, and children are the focal point for intense advertising pressure seeking to influence billions of dollars of family spending."

Franchise opportunities in the kids market are not limited just to businesses specializing in children’s products and services. Many franchises that cater to the public at large also are greatly dependent on the children’s market for their continued success and go to great lengths to make their outlets kid-friendly. Fast food restaurants with their play areas and marketing tie-ins with popular children’s licensed characters are a good example.

One aspect of the children’s market that many businesses find particularly appealing is its “bullet-proof” nature, said Selina Guber, author of a book about marketing to children.

"Parents may cut back on eating out. They may put off buying a new refrigerator for another year, or start putting private-label canned corn in the grocery cart," she said. "But no one brags about cutting back on their kids. Parents always want to do well by their kids. They are particularly sensitive to providing for their children’s needs today."

The kids market is often influenced by broader societal trends, such as the environmental movement. As both kids and their parents have become increasingly interested in protecting the environment, eco-friendly products have begun to take hold among children ages three to 11, according to "Kids and Tweens in the U.S.," a new study from Packaged Facts.

Kids aged 3 to 11 in the U.S. have personal incomes totaling $19 billion, and that is expected to increase to $21 billion by 2012, the study found. Marketers that promote eco-friendly products and services may find success in tapping that spending.

The study found that a significant majority of kids aged six to 11 express concern for environmental issues. Nearly three-quarters believe that people should recycle, and 40% say recycled paper products should be a purchase of choice.

"What’s interesting about the green trend among kids is that the kids themselves are fueling it," said Tatjana Meerman, publisher of the Packaged Facts study. "Environmental awareness, even at the youngest ages, is acute."

With a broad range of business types available in this sector, a growing universe of consumers and a tremendous amount of money being spent on kid-targeted products and services, the children’s market ranks as one of the most promising segments of franchising - today, and in the years to come.