MARKETING TO WOMEN

Women are coming and this is no news anymore, according to NRCNext in an article of Monday, June 7. Apparently, the fact that ever more women study and make a career is so  commonplace now that the newspaper asks itself the question: and where are the men?

It turns out that men have massively changed to services careers, such as banking, real estate agent or programmer. In Holland, 70.000 men who formerly worked in production shifted to jobs in commercial services over the last 10 years.  In the US the picture is more extreme - due to the current recession, men are having a difficult time. Business Week reports that 700.000 men have lost their jobs in the last six months, whereas 300.000 women have found one. According to Business Week this is due to the fact that women choose jobs in sectors that stay, like education and health care, whereas typical male employment such as construction work and production work is suffering badly from the recession.

The NRC Next article also mentions numbers of male- and female students at Dutch Universities. It seems that ever more women enter the university, while the number of men doesn’t decrease. So on the whole, more students leave the university. Due to the economic growth, they can all find jobs. Men choose mainly business administration studies nowadays, whereas women prefer social sciences, languages and health care. 

At the start of their career, men are lagging behind women nowadays. They study less and thus need more time for their studies. Therefore, they don’t get management positions straightaway. However, they catch up easily at a later stage, when women have children and stop working full time.

It seems so normal: asking women what they want from shopping centers. In the end, they will be the biggest group of customers. However, usually women were never asked to give their opinion on the development of new shopping centers. Happily, some property developers start asking women for their opinion. The New York Times has found two companies who actually consult women in the concept phase.

The article mentions several malls where women could give feedback on just about everything, ranging from walkways to art. 

A couple of interesting results:

- women aged 35 to 55 complained about the lack of more up market and exclusive shops and an abundance of shops targeting the junior market

- the women wanted more restaurants and different types of restaurants, preferably with outdoor patio’s

- the women asked for more facilities for children and things like broader footpaths for strollers

- as to the design of the buildings: conventional big and impressive buildings were not favored at all. Instead, most women preferred a more village-like set up with different sizes and styles of buildings.

Most interesting conclusion: if developers want to please women, they should not concentrate on buildings and facades only, but offer new ways of inspiring and revitalizing women.

I do hope these companies will come to Holland soon! I could think of some improvements to our incredibly un-inspiring shopping streets!