Niche Marketing Matters

A study by Yahoo! and Starcom/Mediavest Group offers some interesting insights about women and how they interact with the web. The survey interviewed 1199 women about how they use the Internet. Here are a few of the findings:

• The Internet is the preferred media among women and is the 4th most time intensive activity behind work, sleep and time spent with the family.
• The content most popular with women includes subjects relating to news, weather, finance and games - items not found in most popular women’s magazines.
• Women’s online spending habits are increasing and they are also using websites extensively to make decisions before purchasing in the offline world.
• Average time spent actively online each day was 3.3 hours.
• If offered only one choice as to a source of news, information and entertainment, 65% of women surveyed chose the Internet.
• 43% of the women surveyed make regular online purchases.
• 58% stated convenience as the major motivator for shopping online.
• The web is not a spare time activity for the women surveyed and it is accessed at various times of the night and day.

What this means to marketers is that women need to be recognized for the dominant decision maker in consumer and B2B markets that they are. Women outnumber men 51% to 49%. Women make the major decisions in households 75% of the time. Women account for more than 50 percent of stock ownership in the US and by 2010 they will represent 50 percent of the private wealth in America, or about $14 trillion. By 2020 that number is expected to rise to $22 trillion.

Step aside men, women are in charge.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2008 All rights reserved.

(Source: Yahoo! Inc.)

Author Marti Barletta recently coined the phrase “Prime Time Women” to describe women over 50 years old, which she says “was an attempt to move away from the misleadingly negative connotations of phrases like “mature women” or worse, “middle-aged women.”

Here is some quick math from her book “Marketing to Women”: “From 1992 to 2020, the number of people age 50+ is expected to increase 76%, while the number under age 50 will decrease 1%. Americans 50+, while “only” 27% of the population (36% of adults 18+), nonetheless control 50% of the discretionary spending. Per capita, they spend 2.5 times as much as younger consumers. They own 70% of all the financial assets, including 80% of all the money in U.S. savings and loans, and 66% of all the dollars invested in the stock market.”

If you have read this blog with any regularity you know that the aging society is a major marketing mega trend. Hidden within that expanding demographic is the fact the money is also shifting (or, has already shifted) to women. In fact, it is estimated that 80% of the spending decisions in the typical dual earner household are controlled by women, regardless of age.

More compelling is the longer life expectancy of women (currently, women now live 80.1 years, compared to men at 74.8 years per the Center for Disease Control). This puts them in charge of the bulging estates created by the passing of their male spouses, along with the wealth from “baby boomer” parents (parents of babies born from 1946 to 1964) who are slowly dying off. In a nutshell, baby boomer women are in charge of most of America’s personal wealth.

This means that the prime time customer for many businesses is now baby boomer women. This includes financial services, real estate, health and medical, automobiles, consumer goods, etc. Yet, most firms don’t get it since many are still messaging their products and services for the man of the house (i.e. the older infirmed fellow in the rocking chair wearing “depends” who looks to the lady of the house to make all the financial decisions).

For the entrepreneur, this shift of money and power to boomer women is a major trend that is ripe with opportunity. If you sell to consumers and are not targeting boomer women, you need to reconsider your marketing strategy.

Get it?

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.
Please visit my website at www.firstbestordifferent.com

I recently read “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide”, a book written by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever that explored the subject of women and negotiation. I was frankly shocked by the findings in this book.

The simple premise of the book is that women are poor negotiators and they avoid negotiation like the plague. They hate it. Why? The authors suggest that it is mostly role based programming; girls are trained early in life to be conflict avoiders and peace keepers. Negotiation is for boys.

The book offers the following insight:

• 2.5 times more women than men said they feel “a great apprehension” about negotiating.
• Men initiate negotiations about four times more often than women.
• When asked to describe negotiation, men said it is like “winning a ballgame” while women said it is like “going to the dentist.”
• Women will pay as much as $1,353 to avoid negotiating the price of a car, which may explain why 63 percent of Saturn car buyers are women.
• 20 percent of women say they never negotiate at all, even though they recognize negotiation as necessary.
• Men are four times more likely than women to negotiate a first salary.

The negative consequences to this lack of negotiation are very measurable:

• By not negotiating a first salary, a woman stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60
• Only 10.9 percent of the board seats at Fortune 1000 companies are held by women.
• Women own about 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S., but receive only 2.3 percent of the available equity capital needed for growth.

Optimistically, when women are given the right training and “programming”, they negotiate just as well as the men. Or, better. The authors believe that the training starts in the home and must be reinforced in the schools. They argue that a negotiating strength for women is their capacity for empathy; women can better understand how the other party feels in a negotiation (compared to men who can be obsessed with winning at all costs). This empathy enables women to structure win/win agreements more naturally then men. The role models are there. Look at Condoleeza Rice, or remember Margaret Thatcher.

As the father of two daughters, I take this message to heart. It is clear to me that I need to encourage them to take risks and negotiate. I need to send a signal that it is okay to seek conflict to resolve issues and that they both deserve to get what they want. Finally, I need to teach them that negotiation is fun.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2006 All rights reserved.
Please visit my website at www.firstbestordifferent.com