Companies Ignore Women, "the Largest Market Opportunity in the World" - Building Gender Balanced Business

• We’ve said it till we should be blue in the face, but it is nice to have a publication like Harvard Business Review echo it: Women are the big market of the future, and companies are doing such a good job of blowing it you would think they were doing it on purpose.

• The HBR article “The Female Economy” by Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, both of Boston Consulting Group, reports how “women represent the largest market opportunity in the world”.

• How big a market? More than twice the size of China and India combined, the authors calculate (based on current GDP; obviously the countries between them have a third of the world’s women — and total population).

• The authors say, “In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined — more than twice as big, in fact.”

• In clearer terms, the article says women worldwide control about $20 trillion in consumer spending each year, a figure that may grow as much as 40% in the next five years. Women earn $13 trillion a year, a number that should grow at a similar pace by 2015.

• In only one of nine major economies the HBR report covered did women not control the majority of consumer spending: China, where they are responsible for $300 million worth of the $600 million in national private outlays. In the US, women decide $4.3 trillion of the $5.9 trillion consumers spend each year.

• So surely every company should be turning its sights on women, but we know better. “Most companies have much to learn about selling to women,” the authors explain. Sheer ignorance is often the reason companies shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly.

• Marketing is routinely focused on men, paying little mind to meeting women’s needs. Companies often patronize women in advertising, promoting stereotypes, and focus on features that appeal more to men even for products whose purchase is overwhelming made by women.

• The future is bright for companies that figure out how to avoid such mistakes… and for those who don’t, the bad times are not going to go away. “A focus on women as a target market—instead of on any geographical market—will up a company’s odds of success when the recovery begins,” the authors say. “Understanding and meeting women’s needs will be essential to re-building the economy; therein lies the key to breakout growth, loyalty, and market share.”

• First off, companies must provide tailored goods and services to women. Marketers need to keep in mind that women are usually overburdened (from three-quarters, in Japan, to less than a quarter, in India, of men don’t help with household chores, women say), and so they are “especially responsive to products and services that can help them better control their lives and balance their priorities.”

*“Knowing whom you’re targeting and what she looks for in the marketplace can be a tremendous source of advantage,” the authors point out.

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