Source: Financial Post, Exchange Morning Post
A new study confirms what savvy marketers have known for years: the gay community has major wallet clout and represents vast potential growth for marketers.

That's especially true in Canada according to the study commissioned by the International Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (IGLCC) where the study concludes

The study describes it as a varied population which has a great purchasing power. It found that LGBT consumers are faithful to their favorite brands and generally have a higher discretionary income than the population as a whole.

But it is still a vastly unexploited market segment relative to its size.

"The gay market is larger than any ethnic market in Canada and it's almost as big as the youth market," said Laurence Bernstein, author of the research and president of Toronto marketing consultancy BC3 Strategies. He noted that the estimated spending of Canadian teens was $153-billion in 2006.

"Companies [which] spend an enormous amount of money on finding out about teenagers are not doing the same for gays and lesbians. It is a market that has huge latent spending power that is untapped," Bernstein said.

The study, which also looked at other countries, notes that Canada offers a climate among the most favorable throughout the world for the development of the LGBT market. To arrive at this conclusion, the authors of the study analyzed the economic potential as well as the political, social and media environments of the various researched countries.

"There is a great deal of multinational support for GLBT diversity in Canada from companies such as IBM, Xerox and Delta Hotels, along with strong support from major international banks like [Toronto-Dominion], ING and Desjardins as well as service industries like Air Canada and VIA Rail," the report notes.

It also says Canada, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, has a high level of acceptance for gays relative to other countries, particularly in its large cities.

Visible spending, or that which can be linked directly to a specific market segment, has grown in the GLBT community "as [gay] people are living more publicly, relationships have become more secure and Canada has been more accepting and more 'out,' " said Bernstein.

"These data confirm our existing perception that the LGBT market is still largely under exploited, even if it represents a basin of consumers with an extremely important purchasing power", declared the Secretary General of the IGLCC, Pascal Lépine.

"In the light of this information, we hope that the various companies throughout the world will become aware of the many opportunities offered by the LGBT market, as well as of its own characteristics, in order to effectively target it by using the most optimal arguments", added Mr. Lépine.

Canada's largest publisher of LGBT magazines, Pink Triangle Press, told Financial Post that the company has seen a significant increase in advertising by national brands.

David Taylor, national account manager for Pink Triangle's Xtra newspaper, told the Post that the paper has seen "exponential growth" growth in advertising from mainstream businesses.

But Taylor said there is still a general fear in upper management of major companies about marketing to the segment.

"[Xtra] represents a very strong male demographic," he said, and companies targeting males would likely do well to advertise in Xtra. "Some of the companies know it, but they cannot get their CEOs to approve. These are often multinationals and they are not worried about how Canadians will react, but they might be worried about a backlash in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East or parts of Asia [where homosexuality is taboo.]"

Even in North America, firms dabbling in segmented marketing to gays or donating to gay causes have felt the wrath of conservative groups.

The International Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (IGLCC), an international LGBT business network, was founded in 2006 in Hamburg, Germany and is based in Montréal.

Full article: Pink money talks | Financial Post
In Canada, two million gays and lesbians represent a market of 100 billion dollars | Exchange Morning Post