Marketing to Women: Women Still Dominate Retail Shopping

A new report from Nielsen confirms that women still control the spending power in the US.  Some people estimate that we control $5-15 trillion annually.  Now, I know that saying women still dominate retail shopping is like saying that it still snows at the North Pole, but there are some shifts going on that are interesting.

The report points out that men are taking a more active role in the shopping process than they have in the past. Woo-hoo!  Between 2004 and 2012, U.S. women reduced the number of trips they made across most retail channels, while men increased their visits to all outlets except grocery and drug stores.

However women are still spending more money per trip than men in all shopping channels.  Women drive the larger stock-up or planned trips and outspend males by $14.31 per trip in supercenters and by $10.32 per trip in grocery stores.

So basically, women are still doing the majority of shopping, but the data tends to suggest that men are beginning to assume more shopping duties beyond the trip to the convenience store for beer and chips.

Talking to the female shopper is more important than ever.  So those  at Nielsen are concerned, like we are, about the emotional and rational content of marketing and advertising messages.

Women remember more and differently than men do, so talk to both her emotional and rational sides and acknowledge her attention to detail. Layering emotional decision-making opportunities with rational information will increase purchase intent and will have strong “sticking” power. According to Nielsen NeuroFocus, the female brain is programmed to maintain social harmony, so messaging should be positive and not focus on negative comparisons or associations.

In other words, women form value opinions based on both emotional and rational reasons to buy.  That’s why the Darth Vader spot for Volkswagen was a game changer.  It spoke to both men and women about the special moments of family life yet focused on a buying feature of the car.  And yes, women are the buyers of most cars too.

Marketing to Women: The Economy Driven By Top 5%

An important article from Wall Street Journal’s The Wealth Report:  U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich shows how important consumer spending is to the economy, and who is able to spend us out of this post recession malaise.  Here are the facts:

•Consumer spending accounts for tw0-thirds of the U.S. GDP

•5% of Americans by income account for 37% of all consumer spending.  (Not surprising when you understand that top 10% of all income earners account for half of all income.)

•80% by income account for 39.5% of all consumer outlays

The percentage of spending attributed to the wealthy has been growing over the past few years.  According to WSJ, “In the third quarter of 1990, the top 5% accounted for 25% of consumer outlays. That held relatively steady until the mid-1990s, when it started inching up past 30%. It dipped in 2003 and again in 2008, but started surging in 2009 amid the greatest bull market rally in history, with the Dow Jones Industry Average rising nearly 50% in the last nine months of the year.”

It seems that two trends are attributing to this growth – one was the pent-up demand by the wealthy created during the recession, and the second was the middle class and lower groups that have been dealing with mortgage crisis and lingering unemployment.

And as most of you know, this recession has been a Mancession, putting more pressure on the women to keep their jobs and manage the household budgets.

Women now control 60% of all wealth in the United States. Based on research by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, American women are better educated, enjoying more successful careers and leading a social and economic shift in American households.

With this new economic power and a tendency to be more conservative in spending, the consumer spending cutbacks can also be attributed to the women’s fear that the recession is not really over.

The Unity Marketing’s Luxury Consumption Index that tracts affluent spending has stalled at 78.3 points in July 2010 as affluent consumers continue to reflect uncertainty about the future of the economy.  One of the key measures of the index shows that 36% of luxury consumers think the country is a whole lot worse off now as compared with three months ago, when only 31% thought we were worse off.

Basically three out of four luxury consumers believe that the recession is not over, and since the women are the spenders, we are going to have to feel more secure to start spending our way out of this monetary malaise.