What Women Want The growing economic power of women consumers is transforming today's marketplace. Find out how to tap into the desires of women--and watch your business take off.
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
Freud famously wondered, "What does a woman want?" He never figured it out, but many business owners have-and are making money in the process. What women want right now is attention to detail in product design and service; the right choices, not endless choices; and a nuanced, longer selling process that respects their desire to understand what they're buying before they take it home.
This prevailing wisdom doesn't just apply to the obvious categories like clothes, kids' stuff and cosmetics. Marketers of any product or service can adopt a service philosophy that delivers what women want. Once you translate these expectations to your market niche, you'll win the hearts and pocketbooks of women.
That pocketbook is big and carries plenty of cash. Trend watchers say the escalating economic power of women is emerging as one of the biggest business stories of this decade.
Management guru Tom Peters discovered the importance of women in 1996 when a colleague dragged him to a meeting of high-powered women. Listening to their stories of how businesses brushed aside their requests was a shock. "The more I talked, the more people brought me stories," says Peters. "I thought, How weird is [it] that nobody talks about this?" Peters made the economic power of women a central point in his new book, Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age.
Women have been ignored because they're in plain sight. It's standard marketing wisdom that women control 80 percent of all household purchases. That's why marketers of household supplies, kids' gear, food, cosmetics and clothes are good at reaching women. But women buy gender-neutral stuff, too: cars, auto services, technology-the list includes everything but Viagra.
Women's earning power is escalating: They comprise over half of all college students and about 38 percent of small-business owners, according to 2002 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A February 2002 study by Prudential Financial found that, of the 400 American women surveyed, 37 percent live in households with incomes of $50,000 to $100,000, and 12 percent live in households with more than $100,000 in annual income. Nearly half of adult women are solely responsible for saving money for their households.
Margaret Gardner of marketing consulting firm Yankelovich reports that 60 percent of women 16 and older are working. In nearly two-thirds of households, women are the primary shoppers, but 72 percent of married women who work full time are the primary shoppers. No business owner can afford to ignore women, and few would admit to doing so. But not ignoring them is not the same as attracting them, and attracting them is not the same as winning their loyalty.
Sweat the Details
Get the little stuff right, and the big stuff will take care ofitself. Women develop a collage of impressions about a businessfrom a hundred small factors. Everything from its cleanliness tothe design of the shopping bag gets a woman's attention. Whilemen tend to make judgments based on first impressions and keyinteractions, women never stop gathering information. Smartbusiness owners turn this to their advantage by investing in smallamenities women can appreciate.
Nancy Poisson, area director for 333 Curves franchises innorthern New England, always looks for ways to draw new customersto the fitness centers. While each new franchise advertises locallywhen it first opens and offers free trials, customers renewmemberships based on experiences at the training centers. Poissonhas new franchisees plant free membership bags in waiting rooms ofbusinesses ranging from pediatricians' offices to quick-lubeshops. That gets potential members to come by the clubs for aweek's worth of free sessions.
Then it's up to franchisees to keep the excitement going.New Curves owner Tammy Latvis of Hanover, New Hampshire, got 500leads when she opened her second location in spring 2003. Sheensures that workout leaders never flag in their encouragement ofwomen clients who are self-conscious about how they look in workoutclothes. Women turn into the centers' best missionaries whenthey invite friends to join them for free sessions. Latvis isalways cooking up rewards for women who recruit new members."It's like the 'free with purchase'mentality," she says. "It works!"
The Right Choices
Women have so many work and family responsibilities, theydon't have time to research and ponder every buying decision.Offering carefully selected choices will win business over anoverwhelming A-to-Z plethora. "One way to get women excited isto have fewer but better choices," says Carrie McCament,managing director of the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, consultancyFrankAbout Women. This is a strategy adopted by designer EileenFisher, who offers simple clothes in a limited palette; and somefurniture stores, such as Storehouse Furniture in Atlanta, thathave pared their selections to an "everything goes witheverything else" array.
That's the core of Gretchen Schauffler's strategy tobuild a new brand of house paint. In the past three years, she hastaken DevineColor Inc.'s paint from a nonentity to a boutique brandavailable on the Web, in West Coast stores and through more than300 dealers nationwide. Schauffler saw an opportunity to reinventwall paint and the way it's sold in the mid-90s when she andher friends were decorating their houses and getting frustratedwith the paint available. Because traditional paint companies offerthousands of shades on tiny strips, there were too many choices.Schauffler, 42, and her friends would make choices according to thechips and end up with walls that looked nothing like theyexpected.
She created a palette of just over 100 colors, and collaboratingwith a regional paint manufacturer, she came up with a new way tomerchandise the paint: daubs of paint on palette-shaped boards incoordinated groups. "Women would understand [if] color wasorganized in a way that they could recognize the subtleties. Theydo it with makeup and fabric all the time," she says. It'sworking. Devine Color Inc. is growing at 30 percent per year,bringing in 2003 revenues of $8 million.
Peggy McCloud, 49, owner of Jill's Paint, a home decoratingboutique in Los Angeles, sees women customers walk into her storeand gravitate to the Devine display. "They love the palettesof complementary colors and that you can go home andexperiment," she says. Customers can buy pouches of each paintcolor for about $3, take them home and paint their walls to get aread on whether it's right for their rooms.
So what's the surprise? Their moms count as friends. Thegeneration gap doesn't exist anymore, say marketing consultantsand executives at companies that target women. Having seen theirmoms manage careers and households, young women consider them aresource for smart consumer choices.
The key is to avoid assuming that today's young women arejust like boomers were at the same age, warns Mary Lou Quinlan, CEOof Just Aska Woman, a New York City consulting firm. Many young women havetraveled widely and are accomplished and picky consumers. At thesame time, a high proportion of them live at home. Though manycarry student loan debt, they also have a lot of disposable incomebecause they have no household expenses.
"They're not like [the characters in] Sex and theCity," says Quinlan. "They're more conservative.They are optimists, but not activists." One thing they have incommon: They expect purchasing and customer relations to bethoroughly supported by technology. This is one group, saysQuinlan, that expects businesses to relate to them through e-mailand online ordering.
A Selling Spiral
Whether buying for themselves or for the businesses they own ormanage, women make final purchasing decisions based on therelationship with the seller, not on statistics and quantitativedata, says Peters. Given a choice between two nearly identicalproducts, women are likely to choose based on customer service andthe ongoing relationship with the vendor, while men focus onstatistics, such as the breakdown rate of the equipment.
"Men want [to buy] the product then leave. Women want toknow 'How will it work?'" says Andy Andre, owner ofPrescott True Value Hardware in Prescott, Arizona. By having enoughstaff to guide customers through installing shelves or hanging apicture, Prescott True Value has developed a loyal following ofolder women running households on their own for the first time dueto divorce or widowhood. They have a lot in common with women whohave just purchased their first homes and want to get down anddirty with drills and brushes.
Every time Prescott True Value adds a product line in responseto the requests of women customers, it has a winner. Andre says thestore doesn't need to focus its advertising specifically onwomen; all it takes is one visit to hook them. "Customerservice is all about respect," he says. "It's takingthe time to explain things to a customer and not talk down tothem."
There is no shortage of cosmetics companies, but Sandi HwangAdam, 32, felt that major cosmetics companies were limiting thecolor spectrum of their products. Maven Cosmetics, which shefounded with Noreen Abbasi in 2002, markets makeup for women of allskin types, including very dark and very light. The Chicago-basedcompany's sales are expected to grow by about 75 percentbetween 2003 and 2004, thanks to newly signed contracts with thelikes of department store Marshall Field's.
Customers are enthusiastic because the company constantly testsand retests its shades by literally pulling women off the streetsto give them makeovers, says Adam. She and Abbasi, 31, ditchedtheir high-paying corporate consulting jobs to work at departmentstore makeup counters for six months before launching their line.That experience has helped them present Maven products with a"we're on your side" attitude instead of the"we're the expert" tone many cosmetics conglomeratesadopt.
BIZ Experiencess assume marketing to women is all about discountsand giveaways, but creativity and care are what really attractwomen, says Martha Barletta, president of Winnetka, Illinios,consulting firm The TrendSight Group and author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach,and Increase Your Share of the Largest Market Segment. Whenwomen find a business that speaks their language, they'll talkabout it with their friends. While men make decisions by"stripping away extraneous information, women add informationto the process," says Barletta. "We notice the smallthings. If a man is ignored by a sales clerk, he thinks 'What ajerk.' A woman will think 'I hate this company.' Thesmall things, good and bad, make more of an impact."
"There's a dramatic shift in generational perception ofa dad's role," says Chung, who works partly from his homeoffice and shares family responsibilities with his wife. Therecently folded Women's United Soccer Association, forinstance, made the mistake of trying to appeal primarily to moms,says Chung, who researched the league's marketing strategy. Infact, dads were the ones who bought tickets to attend with theirdaughters. "If your services are purchased by families,"Chung says, " you need to question the old wisdom that momcontrols everything that goes on inside the house."
Learn More
Ready to research the booming women's market? Check outthese sources:
- The Center for Women's Business Research offers abroad range of original research and statistics on women businessowners.
- Women and sports, women and health, and women and fitness areon the mind of consultant Andrea Learned, whose Web site, includesnumerous articles on reaching women.
- At the online library of the KauffmanCenter for BIZ Experiencesial Leadership, you can downloadacademic studies and papers on a variety of small-business topics,including the unique way women business owners network with eachother.
- Marketing to women via the Internet need not be a shot into thedarkness of cyberspace with some insights from marketing resourcessite Tamingthe Beast.
- Keep up on trends fueled by women in business at the site ofthe NationalAssociation for Women Business Owners.
- The Insight Research Corp. summarizes speeches that itsexecutives give at conferences on its Web site;targeting women and specialty niches within the women's marketis a topic they address often.
- Another research firm, Ipsos, summarizes its findings on thewomen's market at its Web site.
- All About Women Consumers is a veritable encyclopedia ofstatistics, demographics and trends about American women'sconsumption preferences. The most current edition was published in2002 by Paramount Books.
Joanne Cleaver has written for a variety of publications,including the Chicago Tribune and Executive Female.
