Why She Buys (5 page)

The social and demographic trends impacting women around the world, which are outlined in the next chapter, are valuable insights that set the stage for what women will want and need from business over the next twenty-five years. The pages ahead are designed to do four things: first, arm you with the most current data about female buying power; second, provide you with insights into how women view the world and everything in it, including whatever it is you’re selling; third, give you an overview of the most important demographic trends that will help you with long-range planning; and finally, bring the concepts of this book to life by sharing real-world case studies, with practical tips and strategies that you can apply to your own business.

Assume Nothing: No Matter Where You Live, Women Are a Foreign Country

T
HE
easiest way to grasp female culture and use the insights to your advantage is to view it as a foreign market. Every country in the world has its own official language(s), cultural norms, and rituals. This is generally true for men and women as well. Each of us is born into an unseen and imperceptible culture built around our gender. We’re so close to it that we take it for granted, and we assume the opposite sex knows all about it and understands it, too.

Not long ago, I went on a business trip to Italy. I was at a lively bar full of Italians, and there was another American in our group. He was a man in his fifties. Back in the United States it was the middle of football season, and this guy could not stop talking about his favorite team back home, the Philadelphia Eagles. He talked animatedly and at length about his favorite star players and controversial plays, none of which anyone in the room cared anything about.

As the only other American present, I was embarrassed. This guy had forgotten himself; he couldn’t step out of his own culture long enough to realize that Italians—and the rest of the world, for that matter—were interested in an entirely different kind of football, and wouldn’t have any reason to be interested in the gossip and inner workings of the Philadelphia Eagles. They were all clearly bored by the conversation but trying to be polite. It was a cultural gaffe—the same kind of cultural gaffe that can occur with businesses that are trying to reach women when they don’t understand what really interests them and what doesn’t.

Take consumer electronics as an example. Products are often sold by emphasizing technical descriptions that are
meaningless to anyone other than enthusiasts, who are likely to be male. Other examples appear almost everywhere you look. Many furniture stores still schedule deliveries during business hours, which requires customers to take a day or half day off work, a decades-old practice that assumes someone in the household stays home all day. Business-to-business ads use the language of war to sell their services, finding a thousand ways to call competitors “the enemy” without realizing that kind of language turns off female executives. Customer service numbers force busy callers into irrelevant sets of options that compel them to either scream into the phone or slam down the receiver. A woman buying a BlackBerry for her new job will be handed a belt clip that she will never wear, instead of something more suitable for a female wardrobe. Every day, in virtually every industry, the gender differences of the most powerful consumers are overlooked or untapped. The good news is that the opportunities for improvement—and subsequently increased sales—are vast, and the solutions are relatively simple once you train yourself to see the world through a woman’s eyes.

Seeing the Forest as Well as the Trees

L
ET’S
stop right here and take a moment to assess the situation. Here’s what we know:

• Women drive consumer purchasing
.

In cultures around the world, gathering provisions for the household has long been considered an important part of a woman’s role. This is obvious.

•
Men dominate the senior levels of most of the companies that make and market the products women buy
.

This isn’t always obvious, because there are so many women in middle management.

•
Men and women are so different, they often have trouble communicating with one another
.

This is obvious to anyone who has ever lived with a member of the opposite sex.

•
Understanding these differences can provide businesses with a significant competitive advantage, but it takes work
.

This is obvious only to those companies that are already doing it.

•
The gender gap is a source of missed opportunities and lost revenue, and it should be addressed through education and training
.

Aha. This is the part that hasn’t been so obvious. Until now.

This train of thought seems simple, but there are big reasons why many companies cannot yet see the forest for the trees, nor the opportunities that can open up for them when gender differences are understood in depth.

•
Political correctness stifles frank discussion of the subject, even among women
.

Because the glass ceiling still exists, many people are uncomfortable discussing the differences between men and women at work, in all kinds of contexts. Over the past few decades, women have worked so hard to prove they’re equal that they’re often hesitant to point out that
they’re different—just in case they’re viewed as lesser or weaker. Men don’t like to bring up the subject because they fear being viewed as politically incorrect at best or accused of sexual harassment at worst. Clearly, the message of this book is to celebrate, appreciate, and leverage the differences for mutual success. Pretending these differences don’t exist doesn’t serve anyone well and can run a business into the ground.

•
Much of the biological research on brain differences between the genders is relatively new and hasn’t trickled down to either the general public or the business world
.

For most of human history, doctors and scientists assumed that all human organs were basically the same, except of course for those involved in reproduction.
¹⁰
We now know there are distinct differences between male and female brains, and that these differences impact a person’s behavior and view of the world. The practical implications of these insights haven’t yet had much of an impact on business. There are exceptions—Procter & Gamble, for example—where this understanding has had a measurable effect on both the top and bottom lines. As we will explore later, though, this is still an unrealized opportunity for most.

•
Gender differences are not widely taught in business courses at the undergraduate level or in MBA programs
.

The lack of recognition starts at the undergraduate and MBA levels, where behavioral implications of gender—at least when it comes to the making and marketing of products and services—are only superficially explored, if they are explored at all. Gender studies courses at
universities tend to focus on social and political aspects of the subject, not the positive implications for businesses when they get it right.

• The fish are the last to discover the ocean
.

As this old Chinese proverb implies, each gender views its own priorities and behavior as normal, and so it’s easy for male decision makers to believe mistakenly that their female customers share their preferences and priorities.

The Female Economy

I
T’S
well known that women dominate the selection and purchase of consumer categories such as food, health and beauty, and household goods. But their power is rising in nontraditional and classically “male” categories, too, and the companies that don’t recognize this are giving their competitors the upper hand. Assumptions that big-ticket items are purchased primarily by men are simply out of date. By a ratio of nearly two to one, more women than men say they make most of the decisions in their households.
¹¹
The old stereotypes about men driving all the decisions for cars, houses, computers, and consumer electronics are no longer accurate, and the companies that view women as small-time players in these industries are in danger of losing share to those who get it. Take a look at the numbers:

A
PPAREL:
65
PERCENT OF PURCHASES MADE BY WOMEN.
¹²

This number is high because women buy clothes for themselves, their kids, and often their husbands. Which means
that no matter what you’re selling, one of the important questions to ask yourself is not just “Who is my end user?” but “Who is the person who purchases my product, and is that person different from my end user?”

A
UTOMOTIVE:
52
PERCENT OF ALL NEW VEHICLE PURCHASES, INCLUDING TRUCKS, MADE BY WOMEN
(80
PERCENT OF PURCHASES INFLUENCED BY WOMEN
)
¹³

Women buy cars for themselves and for their driving-age children. Women also are the veto vote for cars their husbands want, but you wouldn’t know it by the sheer overload of testosterone-fueled car advertising, or by the customer service experiences at dealerships, which provide little in the way of comfort, both literally (inadequate furniture and ambience) and figuratively (“Please wait here while I go talk to my manager”).

C
ONSUMER ELECTRONICS:
45
PERCENT OF PURCHASES MADE BY
WOMEN
(61
PERCENT OF PURCHASES INFLUENCED BY
WOMEN
)
¹⁴

Household penetration rates for men and women are nearly identical in consumer electronics, with a few exceptions, such as the fact that women buy more cell phones and men buy more navigational devices. (Is this because men won’t ask for directions?) Women often use different criteria when evaluating consumer electronics, such as envisioning items in context (i.e., “Is this TV too monstrously large for the wall space in our living room?” “Is this camera too heavy for my purse?” “Will my kids be able to use this, too?”) For women, context weighs heavily in big-ticket purchasing decisions.

H
EALTH CARE:
80
PERCENT OF FAMILY HEALTH CARE DECISIONS
MADE BY WOMEN
¹⁵

This is the “Dr. Mom” effect. Most women are the first responders to sick family members, and they assume the role of primary caregiver and health care manager to those who are ill. Even when it comes to medical products targeted to men, women are often the ones who either encourage the men in their lives to see a doctor, or buy products on their behalf. Women tend to put their family members’ medical needs ahead of their own.

T
RAVEL:
70
PERCENT OF DECISIONS MADE BY WOMEN
¹⁶

Whether it’s Disney or Düsseldorf, women plan vacations for themselves and their families. They also make up an increasing portion of business travelers. From “girlfriend” travel packages to hotel room decor—in which items such as beds, linens, and lamps are now available for purchase via a hotel’s catalog—women’s preferences are driving changes in an industry that historically has catered to male decision makers.

I
NSURANCE, INVESTMENTS, AND RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS:
90
PERCENT OF WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN DECISIONS
THAT AFFECT THEIR HOUSEHOLD’S RETIREMENT AND
INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS
¹⁷

More women in the workforce mean more women contributing to 401(k)s and other investment accounts. The twin phenomena of delayed marriages and frequent divorces also means that more women are the sole financial decision makers for their households. Women think about investing differently because the trajectory of their lives is
different from men’s. They spend more time out of the workforce during their lives to care for others, and they spend more years in retirement because they live longer. There tends to be a confidence gap with women, however, the majority of whom worry about the best ways to plan for their financial security.

H
OMES:
20
PERCENT OF PURCHASES MADE BY
SINGLE WOMEN;
91
PERCENT OF ALL PURCHASES INFLUENCED BY
WOMEN
¹⁸

Delayed marriages and high divorce rates mean that more single women than ever are investing in homes. The condo mania of the 1990s and early 2000s made it easier for many women to purchase affordable real estate. Even within couples, women are the primary decision makers in the purchase of a home. Men are simply not motivated to buy houses that their wives don’t like.