Woman, Know Your Power
Questioning why the world’s largest growth market remain unsatisfied consumers.
I have always been fascinated by the feminism discussion. And I think its relevant now more than ever. As explained in a previous blogpost, I am not very feministic. I see people and skills when choosing who to work with more than I see colour, culture and gender. I believe in diversity yes, but I believe in relevant diversity. That’s another topic. What I want to talk about now, comes from discovering a recent report from Boston Consulting Group investigating one of my favourite topics: why Women’s need remain unmet despite their growing economic influence. I was actually going to write my bachelor thesis on this but then I went with ‘Digital Communication in The Healthcare Sector’, which makes absolutely no sense as I am really drawn to the topic at hand. Here’s why:
As a growth market, women are larger than China and India combined. Can someone tell me why we still design, create and communicate for men? Please, raise your hand.
Women control most household budgets and women get richer and richer by the minute. We might not have understood our power as a market yet, but we know for a fact that we are well educated and are worth our money. In fact, in 2013, women are the majority of undergraduates worldwide so I don’t even get how equal pay is still a discussion. To be fair, employers negotiate with people, not genders. I am pretty sure they will negotiate both women and men down if they are not firm in what they want. So to me, that discussion is old. Dear woman, you know the facts (at least you do now) and you know you’re awesome — just ask for a goddamn raise.
If you ask me, it demands way more attention that brands, corporations, advertising agencies and the likes to this date still don’t understand women. And what’s worse; they don’t even try. Most go with the ‘think pink’ strategy (my favorite example is still Dell’s ‘Della’, haha) — and that’s just condescending. In the near future, I think more and more services and products for women will be through startups founded by women. Just like Hello Flo, a monthly tampon subscription service to girls so they don’t have to face a supermarket line feeling awkward. Like why did none of the multimillion tampon companies think of that?
As a woman, I know that we are loyal to our suppliers — especially those who provide us high quality for less time and money. When it comes to household supplies, services (especially financial) and gadgets, we are quite rational consumers and we buy what we trust, what we have been recommend or what has worked for us before. Why wouldn’t you want to leverage on that? Isn’t returning customers the ultimate goal for any marketer?
One of the largest potential markets is just waiting to be serviced with quality products, good deals, delicious design and thought through user experience. Go get it!
Ps. Somehow its beautiful that women have all this power and don’t even know it. As 16 year old Malala Yousafzai says in this interview on The Daily Show; women have always had power in the homes, but with education we have become even more powerful (possibly making more decisions than men).
Enough of this, next time I’ll write something genderless for sure.
