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The Pink Pound

The Pink Pound

Power, Mr. David (2009) The Pink Pound. The Irish Times. (In Press)

IN these recessionary times, there‟s one group that will continue to carry on regardless and it seems that they are dodging the relentless misery that has now become known as Ireland. The Pink Pound or the Dorothy Dollar as it is known in American is an idiom used to describe the spending power of the gay economy and now with gay lifestyles being more overtly expressed in monetary terms, marketers have begun to brand this highly lucrative sub-culture with the very fitting buzz phrase „The Pink Pound.‟ Ms. Marie O‟ Dwyer is a lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at Waterford Institute of Technology and she said, “The whole idea that members of the gay community are successful, have big dual income households with substantial disposable incomes and live in mostly urban areas with the likelihood of no children, means that this is one market segment that is here to stay. This growing sub-culture has an escalating discretionary income that far exceeds their heterosexual counterparts.” The Pink Pound is estimated to be worth a staggering six billion pounds annually across the Irish and UK economies and a whopping 350 billion dollars to the American economy but yet this market is being widely ignored.