Who smokes weed? A quick search on Google and you’ll yield the results of the stereotypical cannabis consumer – a young male with long hair, dressed in loose clothing, who says “duuude” in a drawn-out giddy light tone that can only be best characterized by the word – stoner.

Does this persona, however, truly represent the majority of the weed consumers out there today? Assuming you are a business owner, an aspiring entrepreneur, or an investor in the marijuana industry, are you investing your time and resources in the kind of products or services that your consumers truly want?

You can start answering these questions by getting to know your consumers. To conduct your own market research, you can…

1. Roll into some marijuana socializing platforms such as Massroots and High There with your detective hat. Look for: the hottest products and trends, and the type of consumers they attract (e.g. age, sex, location). If ten young women are using the same hashtag to support a brand campaign, ask them, “What do you like about this brand and the hipster accessories you’re wearing?”
2. Get your hands dirty and go out to talk to your consumer in person. “Hello young men smoking on the streets, I love the way you wear your hair, can I asked what infused products you’re using?”
3. Google it. As usual, there is information that you need to pay for, and information that you can get for free. Find the free information. Here is a great study we found for you. Here is another one. We already know what you’re thinking, “ain’t nooobody got time for that.” Fair point, which is why we are happy to summarize some of the key points for you below!

Headset, a cannabis business and market intelligence company, utilized their massive dataset of cannabis retailer transaction data to share their findings:

Who does a typical weed consumer look like?

• Smokers in the customer loyalty program are 70% male
• 50% of loyalty members are under 40, out of a range of 21 – 95 year-olds.
• Flower accounts for about 50% of purchases – men prefer concentrates and women prefer pre-rolls and edibles. Overall, older consumers prefer edibles to pre-rolls.

Do men or women buy more weed?

• Men account for 68.9% of the customer loyalty program to visit dispensaries, compared to their female counterparts that compose the other 31.1%.

What is the age distribution among recreational marijuana consumers?

• 25-29 year-olds smoke the most weed (20%), followed by 21-24 year-olds (16%), and 30-34 year-olds (15%).

How much money do people spend on weed?

• The average marijuana consumer spends $33 on products per trip to a dispenser.

• The median customer spends $645 each year on weed.

• Men and women generally have similar shopping habits, with men shopping slightly more often (every 19.5 days) compared to women (every 21.5 days), and buying fewer items per trip ($33) compared to women ($35).

• Older people generally visit dispensaries less often, but they spend more when they do visit. Ex. Customers in their 80s have the highest median spend of $64 per trip. However, in terms of per year, it is customers in their 40s who had the highest medium spend of $823 last year.

How does gender impact product preferences?

• Although flower is the most popular product for both sexes, women tend to experiment with more products, such as beverages and topicals.

• In general, women tend to buy more pre-rolls and edibles, whereas men tend to buy more concentrates.

How does age influence product preferences?

• Customers in their 50s buy flower at the highest rate.

• The older the customer is, the less pre-rolls they tend to buy.

• The older the customer is, the more edibles and other nontraditional products they buy.

There you have it! We hope you learned a few things about a dispenser business’s consumer popularization, and feel inspired to start doing your own research for your business’s niche population. If you found this article useful, don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter!