Gender, Design and Marketing

Product and service designers place increasing emphasis on the colour, form and appearance of what their organization offers and the language with which they describe it.

Gloria Moss' erudite, sophisticated and fascinating book, guides the reader to an understanding of the way gender influences our visual perception.

In this wide-ranging book the author explores design, visual aesthetics, language and communication, by drawing on an exhaustive range of primary sources of research from psychology, design, branding and communication. The lessons that emerge offer challenges to organizations both in the way in which their design and marketing is perceived by men and women, as well as how the make-up of their workforce may limit their ability to appreciate and address the diversity of customers' preferences. The challenge for management is to overcome these limitations and ensure that an organisation's products and services mirror the preferences of customers rather than those of senior managers. Where the demographics of the workforce differ from those of the customer, management needs to take steps to ensure that customer-centric preferences inform decision-making in the organisation.

Gender, Design and Marketing offers researchers, designers, brand and marketing specialists an enhanced understanding of gender; the ways in which an organization's actions can engage or dissuade the men and women that make up its market; and how to increase the breadth and depth of appeal for all products.