Women allocate their time differently than men do. Learning about women's life/time factors will help marketers understand how this affects their purchasing decisions.
The most obvious life factor is that women live longer than men- so older women possess the purchasing power of their generation. We need to understand how modern women age. They are far different from the stereotype of the mild, inactive grandmother. A Grey Advertising study found that the great majority of women feel stronger and more confident in themselves as they grow older. And with advances in healthcare, older women can look forward to many years of an active lifestyle.
We next consider the life/time factor of the woman's "double day" of home and work. The majority of women work outside the home, and the majority of work inside the home is still done by women. In the 1990s, marketers tried to relate to women by portraying their lives as harried and overwhelming. However, studies show that women themselves don't feel that way.
Most women today don't feel exceptionally stressed out - they see their lives as full and busy but not disjointed or unmanageable. Mostly, they feel there is just not enough time in the day. Time is the single most importance resource for women. Research shows that when given the choice of more time or more money, women picked more time by nearly two-to-one. Knowing that women value time more than money presents significant marketing opportunities, doesn't it?
To compensate for lack of time, women multitask. This is one of the most consistent and systemic differences between the genders - men typically are focused and single-minded, while women are multi-minded and integrated. This multitasking has several results:
- Women can accomplish more, just less predictably (they always try to add something to the mix - sorting laundry while cooking, for instance)
- Women look for tasks to group together (such as going to the grocery, post office and dry cleaners during an errand trip)
- Women maximize instead of prioritize (get as much done as possible instead of getting the most important tasks completed first)
So marketers, here's your challenge. With this knowledge about how women view life and use their time, how should you change your marketing to be meaningful to them?
RSS Feed
I read in the "Women Want More" book by Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre that women want ways to find time, save time, and free up time. However, in your marketing, you shouldn't remind her that she doesn't have enough time because she already knows that.
So if you have a service that really will save her a lot of time, how do you get that point across?
Thank you.