10 MISTAKES MARKETERS MAKE MARKETING TO WOMEN 1 5
10 MISTAKES MARKETERS MAKE MARKETING TO WOMEN
By MICHAEL J. SILVERSTEIN
Women buy goods and services differently from men. They have more experience as shoppers, feel more passion about what they buy and bear the lion's share of responsibility for purchasing household items. Research conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), including a survey of some 15,000 women and 5,000 men in 22 countries, shows that women make over 70% of the purchases of discretionary consumer goods each year and constitute the fastest-growing global market, even bigger and faster-growing than the consumer economies of China and India combined. And yet women are not pleased with the offerings in many categories, particularly health care, financial services and durable goods.
The majority of businesses are managed by men, most of whom don't understand female consumers or realize just what a fundamental role they play in the economy. Why are these executives so out of touch with such an important consumer group? There are many reasons: They don't do enough research with their female consumer base. They don't know how women learn about new products, investigate them, buy them, use them and recommend (or reject) them. They don't have personal experience of the time pressures that women, especially working mothers who have a full-time job at work and a full-time job at home, face. Male executives generally collaborate with other men, not women, to develop and design new products, determine pricing and create marketing programs. Financial services executives, in particular, haven't often witnessed the "service" that women receive from financial advisers who give most of their attention to the male spouse, even if the female partner has a higher income or more financial clout. Health-care executives don't appreciate how frustrating it is for women to take time off from their jobs to bring a child to the doctor's office and then be forced to wait for attention. Leaders of
By MICHAEL J. SILVERSTEIN
Women buy goods and services differently from men. They have more experience as shoppers, feel more passion about what they buy and bear the lion's share of responsibility for purchasing household items. Research conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), including a survey of some 15,000 women and 5,000 men in 22 countries, shows that women make over 70% of the purchases of discretionary consumer goods each year and constitute the fastest-growing global market, even bigger and faster-growing than the consumer economies of China and India combined. And yet women are not pleased with the offerings in many categories, particularly health care, financial services and durable goods.
The majority of businesses are managed by men, most of whom don't understand female consumers or realize just what a fundamental role they play in the economy. Why are these executives so out of touch with such an important consumer group? There are many reasons: They don't do enough research with their female consumer base. They don't know how women learn about new products, investigate them, buy them, use them and recommend (or reject) them. They don't have personal experience of the time pressures that women, especially working mothers who have a full-time job at work and a full-time job at home, face. Male executives generally collaborate with other men, not women, to develop and design new products, determine pricing and create marketing programs. Financial services executives, in particular, haven't often witnessed the "service" that women receive from financial advisers who give most of their attention to the male spouse, even if the female partner has a higher income or more financial clout. Health-care executives don't appreciate how frustrating it is for women to take time off from their jobs to bring a child to the doctor's office and then be forced to wait for attention. Leaders of