Why is There No Weight Watchers Canada for Men Program?
By David Cameron Google+
The Weight Watchers Canada online program is almost identical to its famous American counterpart except for a few striking differences. In fact, the two online websites are virtually page-for-page duplicates of one another. The two big exceptions are the presence of the French language version on the Canadian site and more notably, the total absence of a program intended solely for men.
Weight Watchers Canada is a subsidiary of Weight Watchers International based in New York City. The Canadian online program website was built in, and is maintained in New York by the same developers that support the main WeightWatchers.com website. This is the same team that developed the celebrated men's online program for the American website.
Why is it then that the Weight Watchers Canada website has no men's program?
We put this question to Weight Watchers several times and the answer was consistently avoided. One American Weight Watchers representative replied that men are more than adequately served by the existing Canadian "unisex" online program. A Weight Watchers Canada public relations representative added that "there are no plans to start a men's online program" and they would not comment any further on the matter. This leaves us with the same question: why is there no Weight Watchers online program for men in Canada? With little input from Weight Watchers, we can only speculate.
One could suspect that the cost of building and supporting the French language site in Canada is an added expense that stands in the way of the addition of a Canadian men's site. But, upon further investigation, it is easy to see that just like most of the English language Canadian site, the French version of the WeightWatchers.ca website is a direct page-by-page duplication of the American site. Any additional costs for the French Canadian site would be largely attributed to translating the sites content from English to French. This cost alone would not represent enough money to be the root cause for not launching an American style men's Weight Watchers program into the Canadian market.
Could the lack of male customers be the reason?
This is also doubtful. Statistics Canada studies show that there are significantly more obese men in Canada than there are obese women. This fact, coupled with men's tendency to shy-away from the traditional Weight Watchers meeting model indicates that there is a large and underdeveloped male customer-base in Canada. This customer base is large enough that it would make excellent business sense to develop a men's program in Canada. So we ask again, why does Weight Watchers not do this?
Unfortunately, the real reason for the lack of a Weight Watchers Canada online men's program most likely comes down to a business decision made in New York. Unlike, for example, the Weight Watchers online program in the United Kingdom, the Canadian online program website is run by Americans - in the United States. As a result, Canadian consumer interests suffer due to the programs placement as a second class business unit of the American parent company. In the UK, the Weight Watchers online website is run out of the UK and their online offerings appear to be quite different from the US program (and by extension, the Canadian website).
What can be done?
In researching this article, I did get the impression that there is a chance the someday, Weight Watchers may create a Canadian men's program that is similar to the current American online program. No one from Weight Watchers actually said that there will never be a Canadian men's program. They just didn't want to say when. Weight Watchers is, after all, a business. If they see that there is enough interest and that there is money to be made, then they will probably come around. With enough urging from potential customers, that "someday" could come a little sooner.
If you are interested in having a men's program like they enjoy in the United States, I urge you to send Weight Watchers customer service an email and tell them that you are interested. If enough of us ask for it, we might just get it!
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