'''Gay marketing''' involves marketing to lesbian and gay consumers as a niche target market. Many companies around the world now actively target the gay and lesbian market.
The often cited figure of ten percent derived from research by Alfred Kinsey is no longer viewed as the total value of the gay market. 6% is now cited by many as a realistic market estimate. This is derived from a couple of key sources including Yankelovich Partners research from the US in 1993 and official UK government figures, released by Whitehall in 2005.
Many companies these days choose to target gay customers by creating specific gay market microsites. American Airlines gay targeted vacations website http://www.aavacations.com/Rainbow/jp_rainbow.asp?ADID=PX1 is one example of this. Kimtpon Hotels won a PlanetOut gay travel award in May 2007 for their GLBT marketing campaigns, including their GLBT microsite http://www.kimptonhotels.com/glbt.aspx
Gay marketing specialists, including http://www.outnowconsulting.com Out Now Consulting, Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., gofelix, Osmosis Medialab, Inc., Prime Access, Inc., and Significant Others, offer gay market, advertising, research and PR services to companies and their brands to develop a gay marketing strategy.
Some UK gay marketing research is cited in the Independent http://travel.independent.co.uk/news_and_advice/article327166.ece.
A lot of companies and brands previously ignored this segment of society but are now increasingly targeting lesbian and gay customers as a viable niche market.
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=229 Time magazine (August 2006) ran a Business feature on brand name advertisers targeting gay customers. http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901060807-1220477,00.html
To learn more you can try some of these links to learn more
*http://www.outnowconsulting.com/who.htm Out Now Consulting, Gay and lesbian marketing agency operating in several countries
*http://www.gaymarketnews.com Gay Market News updates that are updated almost daily
*http://www.commercialcloset.org CommercialCloset.org, Lesbian and gay advertising examples available online - they have thousands of examples that you can search through and view online for free