Product categories and gender stereotypes: Case for beer

17Aug08

About 5 years ago when the term ‘Metrosexual’ gained in popularity, we saw an almost immediate race by marketeers to target this particular group of effeminate males, which was and may still is, an increasingly profitable segment especially in the personal care category. ‘Feminine’ products like moisturisers, haircare and even cosmetics, are marketed with a masculine twist, which imo can be epitomised by JPG’s range of ‘aesthetic enhancers’ for men.

Dark and mysterious, with captions kept to a minimum. The Japanese and Koreans may be exceptions but that's a topic for another day.

Of course, these are really old news – let’s bring in a new perspective. While I am not really sure if gender is an indeed an illusion, gender-specific products are definitely concepts constructed by society. Having seen efforts to market female products to men, can it work the same way then: marketing ‘masculine’ products – such as beer, stout, sports cars and cigarettes – with an additional element of femininity targeting the fairer sex?

Maybe not. Now beer can be really interesting as an example for illustration.

Given Datamonitor’s report on female beer consumption (here and here), it is not difficult to see that creating a group of female brand loyalists to your beer brand or establishing a new brand targeted at the females can potentially be a really profitable idea.

It’s really simple, right? Launch a new brand of beer with a ‘fruity’ taste in a shiny sleek pink packaging, followed by subsequent introductions of new beer variants with ‘feminine’ tweaks such as strawberry/cherry/chocolate-flavoured beer.

WRONG. Or rather, these efforts are not likely to lead to the intended female audience.

Creating a beer with ‘girly’ infusions is simply targeting females who, do not even drink beer in the first place, and who, would very much trade any flavoured beer with sweeter alcoholic alternatives.

Regular female beer drinkers, however, are most likely to already have a preferred brand and like the taste of the brand that they have been drinking. They know how their beer tastes like and there is no need for a entirely modified ‘feminine’ version (maybe with the exception of zero-calorie beer but can I also say that the fear of calories is hardly feminine anymore?). Additionally, the image of beer as a male-only product also serves to set boundaries for the competitive female who yearns to be treated as equals, thus increases the appeal of beer.

At this point, some may ask – Why waste efforts in targeting females then, when I can simply market to males and in turn appeal to the females simulataneously?

Not exactly wrong, however the potential increase in sales from brand switching has been neglected.

There are several research articles (e.g. here and here) that had suggested truth in the hypothesis that highly relevant ad messages eventually lead to purchase activation, either directly by correlations or indirectly under certain conditions or interacting factors such as brand awareness and brand choice. With this, and assuming with the broadcast of a highly relevant ad, one should expect considerable levels of brand switching behaviour given minimal presence of rival brands in the mediascape with the same target audience.

A word of caution though – this is probably more applicable if the beer brand is already established in the men’s market, which is undoubtedly still the main market for beer.

And while advertising to men still often focus on reemphasizing their masculinity, the ladies may be more than ready to embrace their inner male alterego. As for myself, I’d definitely love to try a beer positioned for ‘Girls who work like a man’, ‘Girls who play like a man’ and ‘Girls who drink like a man’. Bring it on!

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