Marketing to women

Posted by Peter Joy on November 1st, 2006 at 9:13pm

There was a terrific pop psychology book around a few years ago called ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’.  It quickly became part of our vernacular and helped explain some of the fundamental cultural differences between men and women.

As a more serious follow up, Martha Bartletta has written a book titled ‘Marketing to Women’ that takes some of these principles and converts them into valuable marketing and communication insights. 
Here are some insights from her book that are worth thinking about:

Women think “We”, Men think “Me”
When men look at a social structure they see a hierarchy.  Women see a collection of peer groups.  Women see themselves as part of various “communities”, their immediate and extended families, neighbours, co-workers, school parents etc.  They are all flat structures, with different, but equal, functions.  Hierarchies are pyramids that rely on one level having superiority and control over another.  Generally trust has to be earned, respect is an attitude.
Women want Trust, Men want Respect
Men have a deep need for others to respect them.  Women, by contrast, generally don’t want to be put on a pedestal .  They don’t want to be “looked up to” anymore than they want to be “looked down on”.  They want to be looked “across at”.  The operative dynamic is one of trust between equals rather than “respect”.
Women Affiliate, Men Differentiate
Men are more oriented than women towards differentiating themselves from other people.  With women it is more about affiliation, finding things they have in common.
Men connect through competition, Women connect through commonality
For men every conversation is a mini contest of sorts.  Men either directly or indirectly try to prove their superiority through a display of knowledge, experiences or actions.  Women play back each other’s experiences to show understanding, they come to the aid of people or situations they have empathy for and they share life experiences about each other that men often regard as trivial or pointless.  In this respect, women regard the journey as more important than the destination.

Women seek understanding, Men seek solutions
For women, just having someone appreciate what they are going through is sufficient.  They are not looking for solutions.  Men want to solve problems, they struggle with unresolved empathy.Women get personal, Men stay detached
When men are making connections with each other, they are very reluctant to share personal information.  Women will get personal in what strikes men as the least personal of situations.  Women shop according to how the product or service relates to their lives.  Men shop according to a list of needs or specifications. Women do it all at once, Men do one thing at a time
Men prefer to do things in a linear fashion.  They like to focus on one thing at a time, do a good job at it, and then move onto the next thing.  Women prefer to tackle several things at a time, moving each of them ahead on a parallel path.

Women maximise, Men prioritise
Women tend to have a longer list of things they seek in a purchase.  They take more time and go out of their way more to satisfy all the criteria than men do.  Men tend to prioritise things according to their importance and purchase products that meet the most important, but rarely all, the criteria.

Women want “the perfect answer”, Men settle for a “good solution”
Women use shopping to determine the criteria of things they want to buy.  For example they try on different clothes to refine what they are looking for not to make an immediate purchase.  For men, shopping is about solving a problem.  Need new shirt, go to shirt department, choose shirt, pay for shirt, go home, drink beer.  For women, figuring out what they want is what shopping is for. Many of these insights affect how we market products and services.  How we retail products, merchandise store, train sales people and create advertising messages.  If great marketing is about understanding the needs of our customers, then we should be paying more attention to the attitudes and perspectives of women.  When you improve your marketing to women, your customer satisfaction goes up among men as well.  When you meet the expectations of women, you generally exceed the expectations of most men.
 

 

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Posted in Insight, Marketing Strategy