PepsiCo announced through its CEO that it will start making special snacks for ladies. The multinational company that is behind popular snacks such as Cheetos, Lay’s, Doritos, and Fritos said that the way that men snack is not the same as women. The company added that it wants to address the specific needs of its female customers and as such, there is value in developing snacks for her.
This was unexpected but according to Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, after analyzing the snacking habits of both men and women, the company felt that it had not done enough to improve the experience for its women customers. Speaking with Stephen Dubner in the podcast series The Secret Life of CEOs, Nooyi talked about snacking habits by focusing largely on women.
According to the PepsiCo CEO, having observed the snacking habits of customers, some patterns appear to be emerging. For example, when men snack up on Doritos, they tend to go wild with every bite. They lick their fingers and the small broken chips at the bottom don’t go to waste. They open their mouth and pour everything in as the last bite.
But for women it’s different. Nooyi says that you will rarely see women licking their fingers when they snack on Doritos, and they don’t pour the small little broken chips at the bottom of the pack in their mouth. Because of this, PepsiCo thinks that there should be a product that allows women to enjoy Doritos just like men.
The goal is to redesign the packaging and overall design of the product to suit the snacking habits of women. According to Nooyi, PepsiCo is already planning to launch such a product. The CEO says that most women prefer low-crunch and tasty Doritos. In addition to this, most women wouldn’t want chips whose flavors tend to stick on their hands. That’s why PepsiCo is exploring innovative packaging designs that will allow women to put the snacks in a purse.
It’s not yet clear how PepsiCo intends to achieve this. We are also not sure whether there will be brand name changes for the new products. However, some news outlets are reporting that the changes would open the doors for PepsiCo to launch a new line of low-crunch Doritos and other snacks.
Whether this is a women’s thing or not is a debate for another day. After all, there are women out there who actually love the crunch of the chips while some men might also prefer a low-crunch product. But such massive changes to a product that has a huge customer base don’t happen without a strong reason. PepsiCo must have seen the advantages of launching a snack line only for ladies. The biggest challenge now will be to make sure that once the new Doritos are out, the female customer response will be as expected.
