Now that the marijuana biscuit is out the closet, and the smoke can waft up freely the question arises who is going to dare, and who is going to hold back? This is heady stuff. Fortunes could hang on targeted advertising and the right locations for dispensaries.
The Cannabis Market Intelligence Platform Headset decided to find out. A key discovery was ‘the male-female ratio among buyers of legal marijuana is still well over 2:1 … while the customer base skews young with an average of 37.6 years’. Debra Borchardt writing in Forbes quite correctly wants to know where the hippies have gone. How come the over sixty-fives make up a scant 5% of customers.
Debra poses an interesting question. A large portion of the Woodstock Generation must still be alive, judging by the weight of baby boomers in healthcare. Many early dope heads went on to fill important positions in commerce and government. Perhaps they changed their habits in favor of corporate lunches. Could it perhaps be down to the more rebellious nature of youth? Certainly, many older American citizens are still not in favor of the marijuana mutiny.
But why so few American women. Is this a question of the ‘fairer sex’ versus ‘boys will be boys’? A Gallup Poll found 52% women drink wine and 20% beer. Men are almost the exact opposite with 53% liking beer compared to 20% preferring wine. Designers of advertising billboards have already taken note of this.
The Headset Study has more to reveal. The median customer spends $645 per annum, with 57% shelling out more than $500. This compares well against the Bureau of Liquor Statistics’ report that the average family alcohol spend is a lower $435 on hard liquor, mixed drinks, wine, and beer combined.
So what does this tell us? We now know the ideal cannabis client is male, young, and fairly well heeled. There is a bit of a rebel in men who spend as average $33 per purchase (although when women do buy they tend to spend a little more). Baby boomers shop seldom, but when they do the over-eighties blow an average $64.
Headset has given us an improved idea of how to target marketing, where to place our stores, how to decorate them, and what is most likely to upsell. We don’t see much scope yet for gender specific outlets. What price pensioners’ days on Wednesdays.