It's time to start targeting consumer segments beyond gender

Stop marketing to women. There, I said it. While it may be easy for market research professionals to find patterns in customer data that align to traditional, surface-level demographic segments, this outdated way of separating and speaking to customers perpetuates stereotypes and alienates potential consumers.

In my time as an MBA student, I have read case study after case study in which companies struggle to target women as a buyer segment. Take Giant Manufacturing, a Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer which in 2006 was struggling to sell bikes to men and women simultaneously.[1] In the case, Giant self-describes as a brand that uses consumer feedback in its product and positioning decisions and did a fair amount of categorizing its customer base along the gender binary—given the nature of the way men vs. women’s bikes are sold. Most of women’s bikes had secondary placement in store displays, relegated to a “women’s corner” in stores.

So, what was Giant’s innovative solution? Not to do a better job of including women in the current customer experience, but to create an entirely new store just for them. The store itself “was designed to make women feel more comfortable” and not pushed into buying anything. By observing and interviewing customers, Giant leadership learned some “lessons that confirmed their initial assumptions” (if that’s not confirmation bias, I don’t know what is): That women valued style over performance, that women used existing compartments on bikes for makeup accessories, and that women preferred to buy technical items from male associates.

And yes, this strategy was incredibly successful from a sales perspective. Of course, segmenting by gender is sometimes the right move. Take a Cambridge, MA-based pharmaceutical company that launched a new weight loss drug a decade ago: Their customer research found that, indeed, 65% of women but just 35% of men reported being dissatisfied with current weight loss options on the market.[2] By definition, strategy is about what you choose not to do, and it was logical for this company to choose not to serve men as a customer base. 

Still, the combination of my own research and experience has shown there are other ways of parsing consumer data that are more meaningful—and might help the industry move the needle on stereotypes that were reinforced in the Giant case. This played out in research I conducted for a group project last year on—of all things—the Ice Shaker, a protein shaker bottle launched by a Gronkowski brother that received funding on Shark Tank. Much like Giant, the Ice Shaker’s marketing, and specifically its segmented product design, is primarily targeted towards men—for example, we found that 87% of its Instagram posts featured men only.

However, our survey of more than 200 consumers found that the decision to purchase a protein shaker bottle has more to do with exercise habits and attitudes rather than gender or age. Our analysis found that gender and age could not be used to determine a person’s likelihood in purchasing an Ice Shaker. However, exercise frequency in a given week was a much more meaningful indicator of purchase. This is supported by prior studies, which also found that that variables such as age, gender, and income do not have a significant influence on a consumer’s decision to consume whey protein, however, a consumer’s chosen exercise type (“power and strength” vs. “endurance” types of exercises) do.[3]

Through the combination of this primary and secondary research, and in my conversations with others in the field, I believe firmly that as a marketer your successful positioning depends more on consumer attitudes than basic, surface-level demographics like gender. In fact, marketing theory presents a rich and robust list of not-so-obvious indicators and consumer attributes by which you can more meaningfully influence consumer decisions.

Beyond traditional demographics, which may result in perpetuating bias and stereotypes, try using the following list from Harvard Business School’s Sunil Gupta for starters. They may be more difficult to determine, but will result in more compelling messaging in the long run:

• Psychographics: Intangible consumer characteristics, such as lifestyle, personality, interests, values, and attitudes.

• Behavioral: Usage rate, loyalty, product knowledge, involvement, purchase occasion, and buying stage.

• Benefits sought: Convenience, value, safety, status[4]

It is my genuine hope that these are not groundbreaking ideas, and that this observation is more a result of outdated business school cases than an actual trend in market segmentation. But perhaps that in itself is a sign that things are changing for the better, and that marketers are finding value in targeting customers based on more robust, meaningful attributes that consider the whole person—especially beyond traditional gender roles.

[1] Shih, W., et. al. (2010, April 16). A Giant Among Women. Harvard Business School.

[2] Quelch, J.A., & Beckham, H. (2010, July 22). Metabical: Positioning and Communications Strategy for a New Weight-Loss Drug. Harvard Business School.

[3] Keogh, C., Li, C., and Gao, Z. (2019). Evolving consumer trends for whey protein sports supplements: the Heckman ordered probit estimation. Agricultural and Food Economics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-019-0125-9.

[4] Gupta, S. (2019, December 19). Segmentation and Targeting. Harvard Business Publishing.