What do women want?
Well, to start, what women want are power tools, dishwashers, digital cameras, automobiles and houses. Not surprising to those who are counting, women make 80% of household buying decisions in the United States.

This quote from corante's Total Experience sums it up nicely: "women [are] better informed, more inquisitive, and ultimately the people who made the buying decision. Males in couples often stood on the sidelines while their female partners did the bargaining -- hard. The show host speculated that men don't want to be one-upped by salespeople, which is how they feel if they have to ask for advice. The same is true, it might be observed, for couples on the road or traveling overseas: who wanders endlessly, and who asks the questions that gets the couple where they're going? You got it: the gal. "

And why the hell do so many marketers focus on the 18-35 male market? Probably because those consumers watch tv, play video games and go to movies, and are the benficiaries of everything advertisied, but is the acutal purchaser of less than 20% of it. If you are selling beer and pizza, you might want to appeal to men - well scratch that, apparently most men prefer women to call and order pizza. Why is anyone worried that men arne't watching as much tv?

Some facts:
Women bring home 55% of income, so they are more than empowered enough to make purchasing decisions on their own.

1 out of 4 households in the United States are headed by a single woman.

83% of US households have 1 checkbook that is handled by the woman.

22% of homes are owned by single women (cmpared to 12% of single men).

The prognosis is on the upswing: Women for the last five-ten years have brought home the majority of business, law and overall degrees. (57% of bachelors degrees go to women, and an ASTONISHING 46% of medical degrees go to women.)

The 80% number is more conventional wisdom than hard number's but the 80% figure originates from some serious stats on female purchasing decisions. For instance, women make:
92% of grocery decisions
62% of new car decisions (40% of trucks!)
55% of consumer electronics

The Total Experience blog gleaned three points worth repeating here:

• Experiences are almost certainly different for men and women, categorically, outweighing individual differences. Designed experiences must be tested for these differences.

• Any experience design for a mixed audience must be designed with the assumption that the women's experiences will be decisive, if the point of the experience is a subsequent action on the part of the “experiencers.”

• Teams of experience designers will benefit by including women who see things in a context that men may not share -- and by taking their advice.

and here are my additions:

• Women are fantastic reasearchers. Don't over simplify for your female audience or inadvertantly condescend, they want know all the facts and want to know why each fact is relevant.

• If a woman has a bad experience, she will tell 20 of her friends for the next 20 years. Learn this and leanr it well: While a positive experience for women can be pretty good for your brand, a bad experience for women can be horrific.

• Women want to be respected, particularly in historically male-dominated areas such as financial services and automobile purchasing.

• Women pride themselves on SAVING money as well as spending it wisely. An intelligent promotional point might be to highlight what can be saved as well as why the purchase is otherwise prudent.

To hear the full show:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6423213

Labels: advertising