Designing for Gender doesn’t always work…

Dai and colleagues found that “It is common that marketers design and position pretty products more to female consumers than to male consumers, suggesting they generally believe that females have a stronger preference than males for product form over function and apply this belief to their marketing practices. However, this research demonstrates that this belief is often inconsistent with actual preferences. Across seven studies and four follow-up studies, involving both hypothetical and field settings, we demonstrate that both marketers and consumers hold such a belief about gender difference and overpredict females’ preference for form-superior (vs. function-superior) products relative to males. Specifically, people tend to choose form-superior (vs. function-superior) products for female (vs. male) others, but female consumers do not choose form-superior (vs. function-superior) products for themselves more than do male consumers.”

Xianchi Dai, Yu Lin, Jianpink Liang, and Chen Yang.  “Appearance for Females, Functionality for Males? The False Lay Belief About Gender Differences in Product Preference.”  Journal of Consumer Research, in press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad054