I found Pili Vega’s blog post on gender market segmentation very interesting. Her article describes a new chocolate bar product, specifically made for women, and intended to deal with women’s higher « health consciousness. » She is not certain about this being an efficient strategy, because she believes the chocolate bar could have instead tried to appeal to health conscious men AND women. More broadly, she also questions marketing practices that involve market segmentation based on gender « stereotypes. »
In my opinion, this type of product will lead to better sales than a more gender-generic product. Indeed, health-consciousness based on weight is typically a female issue, for many reasons. It’s not just a stereotype, it’s actually true. As such, the female segment is much larger than the male segment for low-weight products, and it is a more interesting marketing strategy to try to greatly appeal to that bigger market rather than catch less of both market segments.
Marketers do not base their decisions on false stereotypes. Marketers actually read psychology and sociology studies frequently. I think we should be wary of hastily dismissing gender preferences. This article from The Fiscal Times, « Five Marketing Myths About Women Debunked » makes such a mistake. Indeed, a good part of this « debunking » article actually relies on irrelevant studies. For instance, it cites a report that is supposed to show women don’t like pink more than men. And indeed, according to it, women’s favourite color is blue. But the survey’s methodology shows that pink was not part of the list of colours to choose from. And in fact, purple was the favourite colour for 23% of women… but it wasn’t any male’s favourite. It’s not all silly stereotypes.