http://www.balsamicsauce.com/collections/frontpage/products/...
holy wtf dude?
Upper middle class women spend more on premium food products than lower middle class women.
(I'm a friend of Patrick's and have had dinner with him enough to guess that he's not food-savvy enough to know that upper-upper class women wouldn't buy "balsamic sauce" because it isn't packaged in a thimble and doesn't cost $150; he just happened to get that one by accident.)
Moms often cook for their families.
Moms of the PTA are especially engaged with their family life, and are especially likely to take seriously the process of shopping for premium food products.
This is called customer targeting. It's about as sexist as it is ageist to target advertising for American Girl Dolls to 8 year girls.
I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this. Sometimes, by being knee-jerk and superficial in your reaction to gender issues, even in the "right" direction, one can actually come close to betraying a lack of understanding about what the real issues are.
(I say this as someone who has spent an embarrassing amount of money on vial-sized jars of balsamic.)
And I don't think it's true either -- that older people are the major buyers of premium groceries. I don't see that many older people when I go into premium grocery stores -- except if by that you mean 35-50.
Upper-middle class foodies. Who are probably less likely to be women than the market for non-premium balsamic.
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2011/in-u-s-men-are-sh...
...which suggest that men make 38% of retail grocery shopping trips. So, if you're going to envision a representative person who is looking for a grocery item, you should probably start out by envisioning a woman.
It is, unsurprisingly, difficult to find more specific information online for free. Instead, by googling "market analysis salad dressing", I find approximately six market research organizations that offer to sell me a report. Perhaps the OP has bought such a thing, but none of the rest of us are likely to bother.
Of course, what actually matters when trying to convert website visitors is not the demographics of the universe, or of US grocery buyers, or even of US buyers of balsamic vinegar, but the behavior of the people who are actually reaching the website. About whom we really know nothing.
It doesn't have to represent the 100% of the consumers of such products. Just the majority.
And by the unwritten rules of how we talk about such things (in essays and such), they don't even have to be "moms of the PTA" literally. It's enough to be "moms of the PTA"-like, ie. ascribing to belong (and exhibit) the same kind of social characteristics (class, sophistication, etc) as "moms of the PTA".
For calling the Politically Correct SWAT teams into innocent conversation. Can people say anything that does not annoy the PC crowds anymore?
Yes, in the real world, women drive more food purchases such as this than men. And mostly "upper middle class" women, or, to be more precise, upper middle class wannabes, buy something like balsamic.
1) Every e-commerce company ever will tell you to offer "Free shipping" even if you have to build it into the price of the bottle. Your target customer doesn't care about the difference between $15 and $20 but, oddly, she does care about paying five whole dollars to ship something she could "just pick up at the store."
2) You're currently selling authentic, which is better than selling nothing at all, but authenticity is not the primary driver of the food purchasing decisions of upper-income Americans. Some options which would complement authenticity: exclusive ("not like the kind you get at the supermarket" / (generally not explicit but heavily implied) "better than what the poor people put on their caprece"), healthy (oh God is that a big one), decadent, social conscience (produced by small family-owned farms rather than big evil agribusiness) etc.
Yes, there's a bit of tension between someone wanting to use class consciousness as conspicuous consumption, but meet your customer where she is at -- and she is at Starbucks.
3) She doesn't care about your story. She cares about her story. Does this make her better than the other moms of the PTA who buy $5 balsamic at the supermarket? If so, lead with that, support with your story.
4) Get some photos of people on your site. Laura of Laura in the Kitchen, for example, as she is a good stand-in for your customer's ideal self. Failing that, if someone who is involved in actually making the balsamic has camera appeal, use them instead.
5) Do some deep thoughts on where people are in the purchasing process when they find you. If they're sure they want this, you don't put the "BUY OUR STUFF" nearly front and center enough. If they're not, your current focus on persuading them that you're the best balsamic makes more sense.