Consumers are increasingly becoming aware that e-commerce websites display adverts based on an array of personal traits – and gender is an important one. Women are often bombarded with suggestions to buy makeup and men with flannel shirts. However, these gender stereotypes have a blind spot when it comes to catering to the non-binary audience on e-commerce platforms. Retailers on e-commerce platforms tend to label their products as ‘for men’ or ‘for women’, which leads to digital ads reinforcing unnecessary gender stereotypes in society.
E-commerce has been massively impacted because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, retail platforms witnessed a massive jump in traffic between 2019 and 2020. With people being forced to stay at home during the pandemic, some of the major retail websites generated upto 22 billion visits in June 2020 alone.
The gender non-binary consumer within the LGBTQIA+ demographic presents a unique challenge to retailers in terms of best practices. Firstly, the non-binary perspective is already marginalised and invisiblised in various offline discourses and policies. Secondly, online shopping often reinforces the gender binary through standard male/female pronouns. It is not yet standard practice for websites to address the demographic using ‘they/them/their’ as pronouns. In fact, previous research on shopping patterns only confirms that in most cases, the consumer is perceived simply as a man or a woman.
Census 2011 records over 45 million documented LGBT persons in India. However, this data is skewed as it focuses on sex primarily, and not gender. So it is difficult to ascertain the statistics of non-binary consumers. Moreover, non-binary representation in e-commerce has fewer outlets. Apparel brands like Biskit, which steer away from the binary, are rare to come across and even when they market their products, it is more along the lines of “unisex clothing” and not specifically addressing non-binary consumers.
Solutions
In 2012, Bic received international criticism for marketing its pens on e-commerce platforms for women. The range was called ‘Bic Crystal for Her’ – indicating that only girls should use that pen. This is counterproductive for brands even in terms of sales and revenue, since they target a narrower audience by using gender-specific labels on products. Using images with men, women and people beyond the binary of male/female is inclusive and in turn, encourages people to buy that product.
Apart from this, brands can also offer the same item in male/female/non-binary/unisex – if they wish to create slight variations of a design in terms of style and size (for instance, in clothing). It is unfair to market products solely for one gender (kitchen items are assumed to be used only by women, which is an incorrect assumption and leads to further bias). Ultimately, brands have a significant amount of power to influence consumers — through ads and the categories that their products fall into on e-commerce platforms. This power must be used responsibly to smash, rather than maintain, gender norms.
Trisha Pande is the Policy Manager and Deepannita Misra is a Research Intern at The Dialogue.
