MARKETING TO WOMEN

I came accross a very old posting on the Computer Idee Blog today, announcing a new navigation system specially designed for women. I guess the product was no big hit, as I cannot find it on the manufacturer’s website anymore. Judging from these pictures taken from the Computer Idee website, this was a serious case of painting things pink.

The discussion about the article showed exactly how polarized women are about such a strategy: 26 women respond by saying how great this is and how they immediately want to purchase one, whereas about the same number of women feel offended by the pink color and especially and even more so about the simplified menus and the bigger buttons. And some more or less agree with both sides by stating that they have enough intelligence and freedom to decide for themselves that they like pink. Obviously, there still is a big group of female buyers for pink products…

Apart from the discussion on the design of navigation systems, there is something to separate systems for women as the navigation process is totally different for men and women. I just read a post on Wonderbranding about differences in the way women look: women have a greater peripheral vision than men so they see a whole range of things (as opposed to focussing on one thing). Besides that, someone told me yesterday that prefer to navigate using landmarks and descriptions such as: turn right after the cafe instead of ‘turn right at the second crossing’. However, I haven’t found proof of that.