Counter‐stereotypical products: Barriers to their adoption and strategies to overcome them

Counter‐stereotypical products (CSPs) are targeted at groups that are opposite to the stereotypical users of these products (e.g., face‐cream for men, construction tools for women). Such products entail adoption barriers, as they are associated with a dissociative out‐group (e.g., men avoid products used by women). A theoretical framework is developed to investigate such barriers by outlining consumers’ cognitive and affective responses to CSPs; namely: stereotyping (CSP is considered appropriate only for the stereotypical user group), subtyping/subgrouping (CSP is useful for certain individuals or subgroups), and derogating (disparaging the CSP due to a perceived threat to self). Study 1 verifies these responses and demonstrates their effect on the evaluation of CSPs targeting men versus women. Overall, CSPs targeting men faced more barriers than those targeting women, and this was especially so for publicly consumed CSPs (e.g., purse for men) as compared to privately consumed ones (e.g., hair‐remover for men). Study 2 examined the effect of a common marketing tool—product design color (e.g., using blue for men and pink for women)—in reducing the above barriers. It was found that blue is effective in reducing stereotype‐based barriers for CSPs targeting men. For CSPs targeting women, using pink was only effective for women scoring high on femininity, and it backfired for those scoring low on femininity.