What is Stereotype Marketing?

By Allison Zwarka

Stereotyping marketing is an essential part of any marketer’s process. Stereotype Marketing is using stereotypes or generalizations to market different products. It is very commonly used across many marketing fields and is proven to be very successful.

 A common type of stereotype marketing is demographic segmentation. This is the use of facts specific to a person’s life, such as age or education level, to market products to a range of individuals with similar situations. When a marketer is looking to sell something the first thing they think is who is my audience? Who am I trying to sell to? By using stereotypes, they are able to target their specific clients and cater their advertising toward them.

Let’s say I want to sell football tickets. The first place I am going to look into is advertising on a sports television network or at a sporting store. Figuring out who your client is, is one of the most important first steps in marketing. In order to be smart and good at what you do, you can’t waste time. Getting directly to places your clients would be or where they would look cuts out a lot of unnecessary advertisement.

A few very common stereotypes are the domestic housewife. This stereotype if mainly used when trying to advertise cleaning supplies or other domestic tasks such as making dinner. Another stereotype is the gender roles focused on children. Most “boy” toys are advertised with little boys playing with them. An example of this is Lego’s Star Wars packs. On the boxes only boys are shown playing with it, because it is categorized to be a boy’s toy.

A lot of the time the average consumer doesn’t even notice these stereotypes being targeted, but it really is an essential part to any marketing campaign.

Kokemuller, Neil. “What is Stereotype Marketing?” Chron, Web. 28 Jan. 2017. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/stereotype-marketing-66515.html>

Joseph, Chris. “Types of Stereotyping in Advertising.” Chron, Web. 28 Jan. 2017. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/types-stereotyping-advertising-11937.html>