@myst4au wrote:
The client has a target demographic for their product. Their target might or might reflect reality, but it is their advertising target audience. I think that it is quite reasonable for the client to want shoppers who reflect the target demographic. Does not wanting 30 year-olds mean that other people do not buy motorcycles? No! It just means that they want shoppers representative of their "bread and butter" actual buyers. Are they missing a market? Maybe, but that is not our concern. They are not discriminating against buyers of the motorcycle. They are matching the shoppers to the audience that view as buyers of motorcycles. Presumably, the client knows that very few women shop for motorcycles (why is irrelevant and they might even be wrong), so they want to ensure that any women are indeed knowledgeable motorcycle buyers/riders.
Actually, I have seen this shop and wondered the same thing. They are open to male or female shoppers. But they have a different criteria for approving female shoppers. If male, you're good to go if you meet the age requirements. If female, you have to have / prove the motorcycle endorsement AND meet the age requirement.
On the basic of gender alone, the bar is brazenly set higher for female shoppers to qualify for this shop.
It's possible this is being driven by a sales process that screens female purchasers differently than males. Perhaps potential customers who are female that drop in to the showroom are asked to show the endorsement whereas male prospects are not.
I know a lot of men who no experience or interest in motorcycling, and who may even have a contempt for them. Consequently they would be laughable trying to do this shop. But they'd have no trouble being assigned to this shop.
Why are they uninterested in whether their male shopper can speak intelligently about motorcycles? Why aren't all potential shoppers asked to prove some familiarity? Is the gender bias in their sales force so strong that a clueless male could pull off the shop but a female who may or may not have better background (or worse) could not, on the basis of gender alone?
There's a whole lot of good questions this raises.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2019 09:28PM by JustForFun.