Can insight into the female psyche make corporations millions?

While women wear many hats in the modern world, be it friend, mother, or professional, the female as a consumer has caught the attention of market watchers recently.

Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre have published “Women Want More,” a book exploring what the female market looks like today and how to best capture it.

Follow this link for a cover of this research in the Harvard Business Review: https://archive.harvardbusiness.org/cla/web/pl/product.seam?c=532&i=534&cs=891f1a6dac549701466611bdc4ce5f29

More women are working and the income gap between men and women is closing. Women, it appears, are enjoying more discretionary income and are willing to spend it. With women working full time more often, both at work and at home, Silverstein and Sayre think that services that cater to the modern women’s busy schedule will generate the biggest profits of the future.

In my opinion, in catering to the female populace it is hard to achieve a balance between realistically meeting the true needs of the average female and falling back on stereotypes. The only way to do this, I think, is to be fastidious about surveying to understand the true nature of demand. When Dell offered a laptop in pink, hoping to capture the fastest growing segment, the campaign crashed when female outcry condemned the campaign as condescending and ill-matched to their actual needs.

Consider financial services. It may be the empirical truth that women are less financially literate than men. If so, and if women really do need good advice, will such programs help to address the problem without doing more harm in terms of reinforcing stereotypes and offending the very demographic targeted?

Fitness, the author’s claim, is an area in which industry has done better for women. Recognizing that women prefer cardio to body building, chains such as Curves have stepped up to provide quick, easy, low cost alternatives to the fitness center chains primarily targeted toward men.

Overall, the economy is paying attention to the unmet needs of women, and this can’t be a bad thing. Products and services specialized for women, especially for modern working women, are designed to recognize the fact that businesses are coming to terms with the fact the females and men are essentially different types of consumers. Different biological systems produce different psychologies, which lead to different characteristic patterns of consumer behavior between women and men. I think it is more important to recognize this fact than to avoid speaking about women in broad strokes. Overall, I am excited to see this women specific research take flight, even if it is in the pursuit of capturing as much of our money as possible.