New Concepts on Market Research

Title: The six costliest mistakes you can make in Marketing to women
Author: Andrea Learned (2002)

In this article, the author gives advice on how companies have to align their marketing in order to reach women. According to the author, Andrea Learned, there are six common mistakes which are made.
First she observes reality, than she gives some advice (factors which should be considered) and at the end she explains how to market products or services to women. This is based on the US market.

The author remarks 1) that women are the primary consumer segment (85% of consumer purchase power). 2) When focusing on women, they should be budget priority. 3) Women are different from each other; they have different interests. 4) Women represent the majority of web users, and do their shopping on the internet more often then men. And 5) last but not least women will not alienate men. All standards will profit all in a whole.

Opinion

The author wrote the article in a sarcastic way. I think she should adopt a more professional writing style and work on an objective expression. (The writing style is like: “let me explain what women are”, or “Women is a complicated species” or even “Women have the power!”). Many progresses were made in Marketing and target group definition. 

Today many companies already know how to communicate with women and how to market the products. For example many lotion producers have a product line “for men” and “for women” and communicate very differently (Nivea). But for small and medium sized businesses it can be very interesting to understand the basics.