Women-centric marketing: A model for pink branding in sports equipment

In the competitive market, especially in the sports equipment market, each product has a large number of brands and each company tries to increase its market share in this market; Therefore, sports equipment sellers must make a lot of effort to attract and persuade customers to buy sports products, in the meantime, branding is one of the important tools with the aim of influencing potential buyers and an important communication and promotion tool. Branding in the sports industry refers to the issue of how a sports organization wants consumers to think about the organization's brand and what distinction they should have in mind in comparison with competitors' brands. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to present a paradigm model for pink marketing and branding in sports equipment. This research has a "qualitative approach" and uses the grounded theory method. In this method, they never start the research with a theory and then prove it; Rather, the research starts from a study period and is given the opportunity to reveal what is appropriate and related to it. In fact, the model is directly extracted from the data and is not revealed from the literature review; In other words, because this strategy is a kind of qualitative research, the research question is not exactly expressed in the form of independent and dependent variables; Rather, only the main question or questions of the research are raised. Grounded theory procedures will be designed to develop a set of coherent concepts that provide a complete explanation of the pink branding model in sports equipment. Since the review of previous researches showed that no exactly similar research has been done in this field; Therefore, the application of this theory with the method of Strauss and Corbin (1990) is justified. This method is an inductive approach, based on it, the theory is formed from the concepts obtained from the data. Therefore, theorizing in 3 stages is open coding, central coding and selective coding. causal factors include social freedom, becoming an influencer in social media and women's spontaneity; Background factors include the launch of social media marketing campaigns and increasing the power of influence and purchase of women; Intervening factors include social norms and women's self-branding and strategic factors including pink product (fit with women's taste and taste), pink price (ethical prices), pink advertisement (focusing on emotions in advertising) and pink distribution (external and internal design). Finally, by using the strategic factors of pink branding in sports equipment, we will witness social and cultural identification, targeted marketing and high acceptance. while it's common to find a product in multiple colors, pink is specifically used in gender marketing to make products available in a single version for women, providing marketers with added value. Although it is not possible to control all the parameters that influence consumer persuasion, color can influence the consumer's attitude towards a product, or even change it, by acting on both cognitive (congruence with the symbol of a color) and affective (disliking the color) aspects. Women are consumers, buyers, decision makers and influencers. When he uses products for women, he is a consumer, and when he buys products for his children, he is a buyer. What are the products needed at home? She makes a purchase decision and when she influences her husband or children and advises them to buy certain products, she influences them. This is due to the importance of women in the field of branding and marketing, not only because they are buyers or sellers, because they participate and make many decisions to buy, the role of women is also important in serving the brand areas, whether the customers are of the same gender. Or they serve marketing plans and issues for the whole market. Therefore, women play a vital role in our societies, especially in purchasing decisions; This role is due to the success of women in many tasks as a consumer and decision-maker, as well as an influential role in the decision-making process of buying others. In the same way, today, various institutions and industries pay a lot of attention to customers and establish interactive relationships with them to gain trust and loyalty. also by providing information needed by customers before purchasing goods and services. Therefore, understanding the wishes and needs of the customer leads to loyalty.