DEVELOPING EMPATHY AS A STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL SKILL IN THE CONTEXT OF INNOVATING FOR TRANSGENDER CONSUMERS

We begin with the premise that empathy adds value as a strategic marketing skill. Getting into the heads and hearts of consumers enables tailored offerings and tactics that meet the unique, richly contextualized needs of a given target audience segment. The advent of marketing automation and artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to make human-centered skills even more critical to develop, as AI’s capabilities stop short of emotional connection and interpretation. As a result, we ask how empathy can be cultivated and applied, and if so, will empathy toward a given market segment result in attitude or behavior change? This paper details a three-stage project that gives students the opportunity to practice using empathy toward a specific market segment–transgender consumers. Students leverage empathy to ultimately develop concrete innovations across a broad range of marketing tactics. We also discuss the impact of the project on students. Results indicate that students completing the project embraced empathy as a strategic skill, and in the process, many also expressed intended support behaviors for the transgender community, although attitudes toward the transgender community did not change.