LGBT marketing

LGBT marketing is the act of marketing to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) customers, either with dedicated ads or general ads, or through sponsorships of LGBT organizations and events, or through the targeted use of any other element of the marketing mix.

The LGBT market comprises a group of customers who buy goods and services from a broad range of companies across industry segments and in many countries.

One of the first instances of the impact of the LGBT community in the marketing world was in 1973 when Coors Brewing Company was the subject of a boycott by the LGBT. The LGBT community joined to protest Coors' hiring practices, since Coors used a polygraph test when going through the hiring process and specifically asking an employee of their sexual orientation. Coors ignored the boycott for several years, but made some concessions in 1978, and in 1995 began several countermeasures, including dropping the questions regarding homosexuality and extending domestic partnership benefits to its LGBT employees. The company also hired Mary Cheney as a marketing representative and began advertising in The Advocate and at events such as Denver's PrideFest.

Marketing to the gay and lesbian community faces statistical obstacles in that few credible peer-reviewed estimates of the gay and lesbian marketplace have been published. In particular, the common use of nonrandom "convenience surveys" of attendees at gay resorts or subscribers to gay or lesbian newspapers has resulted in some unreliable statistical estimates of gay buying power. The exact number of gays and lesbians in a given market is generally, if not always, unknown.

However, some national governments have started to publish data that include demographics of sexual orientation from census results. In the 2000 United States Census, two questions were asked that allowed same-sex partnerships to be counted, and the Census Bureau reported that there were more than 658,000 same-sex couples heading households in the United States. In 2013, the American Marketing Association reported that 3.5% of adults in the United States identify as lesbian, gay male, or bisexual and .3% of adults are transgender, and the LGBT consumer market is estimated to have an overall buying power of more than $835 billion.

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