Eve-olution: The eight truths of marketing to women
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lassic marketing text, written almost 50 years ago, describes the function of marketing as that of seeing ‘the whole business . . . from the customer’s point of view’.1 A study of segmentation variables is often recommended as a way into the customer’s mind, and a way of identifying subgroups which respond in a similar fashion to the marketing mix. Despite this, the question of whether women’s point of view differs systematically from that of men has been overlooked by marketing texts. This book attempts to fill the gap. Faith Popcorn, ‘the Nostradamus of marketing’ according to Fortune magazine, provides a whirlwind tour of her consulting experience. Drawing on consumer and workplace trends, she predicts the eight formulae that will bring business success. Each is the subject of its own chapter, richly illustrated with business and other anecdotes. The driver behind the eight commandments is the increasing power of women as consumers. Women buy or influence 80 per cent of all consumer purchases, 80 per cent of all vehicle purchases and 51 per cent of all consumer electronic purchases. Female-owned and female-run businesses generated US$3,6tn annually and employ 27.5 million people — 76
more than all the Fortune 500 companies in the USA, and as increasing numbers of women desert corporate life (women are leaving corporate America at twice the rate of men) the number of female-run businesses is set to increase. Women’s collective buying power is now more than the economy of Japan, and Popcorn predicts that by 2005 40 per cent of all firms will be owned by women. All this adds up, in Popcorn’s vision, to women being the ‘pioneers’ of consumerism. As such, she considers that women will set the trend for the way products are fashioned and marketed. ‘The direction that women consumers take is the way all consumers are headed’. So in what direction are the signs pointing? According to Popcorn, what women do not want is just as important as what they do want. They shun control, avoid inconvenience and value different things from men. The example of women’s growing use of alternative healthcare (65 per cent of the market in herbal medicines are female) is explained in terms of a female tendency to avoid control and seek involvement (‘being involved in basic decisions makes a woman stay involved’). Differences between women and men are frequently referred to. Women do not like
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 76–77 SEPTEMBER 2001
BOOK REVIEW
to be marketed to in an aggressive way and are wary of impulsive responses. They are not impressed by expensive advertising, pick up subtleties invisible to men, and dislike lack of transparency. Popcorn is short on evidence — half a page is taken up with biological sex differences — and some of the messages cry out for more than anecdote. Some of the messages appear to be conventional wisdom repackaged. For example, her marketing to a woman’s ‘peripheral vision’ looks at times remarkably like merchandising coupled with strategic alliances. That
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