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No asterisk on Amazon: Only one in five products at the e-commerce giant contains gender forms

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Inclusive and gender-appropriate product descriptions play almost no role on Amazon.

No asterisk on Amazon: Only one in five products at the e-commerce giant contains gender forms

Inclusive and gender-appropriate product descriptions play almost no role on Amazon. This is the result of our current analysis. We took a closer look at the info texts of the most popular German products from the book, beauty and smartwatch sectors.

Gendering in addressing customers on Amazon not yet established

Of a total of 37 product descriptions that contain terms to be gendered, only seven were consistently gendered. These were exclusively in the books category.
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Here you can see the data in graphical form:

Although books have the most counter-gendering, the overall percentage of gendered language is low in this category as well. 87.2 percent of the additional entries examined did not use inclusive language at all.
With only one exception, paired forms were used to increase inclusivity in all descriptions with opposite gender. This includes formulations that explicitly mention both the male and female designations, such as "teachers" or similar. The exception comes from the book section and relies instead on colons for illustration. The only use of a gender-neutral term ("teachers") could also be found in the info text of a book, where the pair form is additionally used at the same time.

Technical reasons complicate inclusion

One of the main reasons for not using gender-appropriate language is the algorithm used by Amazon. When prospective customers search for certain keywords, it is crucial for sellers to appear as high up in the list of search results as possible. Using inclusive terms can cause products to slide further down the ranking in some circumstances.
Stefan Gutheil, founder of ICONIC SALES and Amazon expert, assesses the results: "It is of course in the "nature" of some products that they are only aimed at very specific target groups.
Stefan Gutheil, founder of ICONIC SALES and Amazon expert, assesses the results: "It is of course in the "nature" of some products that they are only aimed at very specific target groups. Particularly in the beauty category, there are goods that are only intended to be marketed to women from the outset, which is why many providers refrain from inclusion in such cases. In addition, many product descriptions simply do not contain any terms that could be gendered. However, even in the few cases where gender wording would be possible, most providers miss the opportunity to improve connectivity and reduce barriers. This is due not only to the keywords, which are also rarely given gender forms in user searches, but also to the costs incurred by product descriptions. The longer, the more expensive. Product descriptions therefore remain less inclusive as long as retailers have to record monetary losses due to gendering.
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