It’s no secret that men and women are different to say the least. Need proof to believe such an assertion? Look no further than the aisles of your local grocery store or at the difference in contents of baskets between men and women during your next trip to the convenience store. It gets even more interesting if you observe the navigational patterns and measure the variation between purchases decisions based purely upon gender.

Yet in spite of the inherent differences between male and female shoppers, when it comes to marketing at retail many brands and retailers have failed to adjust their marketing plans accordingly. Instead it seems as though marketers are content choosing to ignore the giant pink elephant in the room — women. And with an estimated spending power of $7 trillion dollars that’s a pretty big elephant to ignore. Some brands and retailers have, however, token note and are beginning to adjust their in-store marketing plans and materials.

“We’ve learned a lot about connecting with shoppers, for instance, about understanding there is a difference between males and females,” said Michelle Adams, Vice President Customer Strategy and Shopper Insights at PepsiCo. “That may seem like it was a ‘Duh!’ moment. But we’ve given ourselves permission to think about shoppers differently,” said Adams who spoke on this topic recently in San Francisco at the 2012 SF POP Show, which recognizes the best point-of-purchase and in-store marketing campaigns and materials produced and executed on the West Coast.

While the inner workings of today’s shoppers may still elude many marketers, particularly along gender lines, the shopper marketing industry has taken large strides forward in this area by embracing neuroscience. After all, marketing is in many ways nothing more than applied psychology. And today’s successful marketer needs to understand basic psychology and physiology to see how it influences the shopping choices being made both men and women in stores.

“Our goal is to see things in a way we’ve never seen them before,” says Adams. “We want to understand the [gender] drivers and emotional roles of shoppers.”

The insights being gleaned from the union of shopper marketing and neurosciencce are extremely valuable and can be easily leveraged to drive brand tactics ranging from advertising circulars to store layouts to differentiating between male and female shoppers.

So far, PepsiCo’s research has unveiled three key learnings: the importance of the shopper’s unconscious, that men and women respond differently, and that psychology influences behavior across the shopping cycle. PepsiCo’s goal is to understand the unconscious, engage both genders effectively, and develop best practices to ensure that its brands apply what they learn throughout the shopping process.

Adams said that PepsiCo brands already have incorporated design changes in circulars based on psychological insights and already have been able to log greater engagement with shoppers because of them. Similarly, PepsiCo has registered encouraging shopper behavior when testing merchandising changes in its own, controlled simulations.

Retailers are increasingly cooperating with brand marketers based upon these findings to reconfigure aisles and endcaps. Take the importance of curvilinear merchandising, for instance. PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay brand is breaking out more rounded fixturing in the store, especially in temporary displays that it controls. And PepsiCo seeks to set up in-store displays that position Frito-Lay snack products and PepsiCo’s diverse beverage brands as handy answers to various dilemmas.

“What we’ve found is a neurological preference toward rounded edges,” Adams said. “Innately, humans avoid sharp edges and objects. It’s a piece of who we are that we never really realized was going on, but is going on subconsciously. But think about it: Everything in nature is round, organic. And in human design, it’s upscale neighborhoods that have cul de sacs and curvilinear streets. Rounding is a principle.”

Measuring the effectiveness of design-based changes in the store environment, however, is more difficult because there are so many things going on there at one time Adams admits.

The only thing Adams is sure of in this regard is that PepsiCo is on the right track and that other smart marketers looking to win in the retail space would be wise to follow suit.