Women : The next big growth segment?

Last week I was reading the cover story in The Economist that talked about women in Asia marrying later.

It was quite a fascinating story.

Among the many interesting factoids 2 leapt out.

Better education and jobs is ‘forcing’ women to delay, if not cancel marrying altogether.

That got me thinking..

Better educated women with better jobs means increased disposable income.

Greater disposable income leaves opportunity for a smart brand to get a share of that wallet.

The obvious places that would attract this money would be categories of self indulgence (this is not unique to the female sex or this demography of course. for eg. Japanese widows are believed to be the single largest cruise segment).

I see fashion products, food, travel, real estate being obvious targets for this spending.

There’s another opportunity. Personal technology.

Today the space of Cameras, Televisions, Computers, Music Devices is driven primarily by the men. Most of these products are created and targeted at the men. Witness the over emphasis on speeds and feeds in any ad featuring any of these devices. Not to mention that many of the products are not very aesthetically designed either.

And again the one brand that stands out in this space is Apple. Good looking products. Easy to use. Easy to understand. And a genius bar where you can ask nearly any question you want without being treated like a fool.

I wonder therefore if there’s an opportunity for a tech brand to focus disproportionate attention to this growing wealthy single women segment.

I would first look at the channel. Can we have a women friendly channel of distribution? Could there be, in big stores, a women only manned outlet. Women to women to help build a greater level of empathy and confidence.

Then perhaps a women run ‘help-line’. This is the place women are encouraged to call with all their tech Qs. This is the ‘genius bar’ living on-line. As this of incremental value, perhaps this could be sold as an additional service when the main product is bought.

How about the literature? Most of the manuals are rather user unfriendly. Use this opportunity to simplify and clean it up. Look at it from the eyes of a working person (male or female doesn’t matter actually). Working people don’t have a ton of time to read, assimilate, trouble shoot their tech installations. They’d like to understand it, and get it right at first shot. Make the manuals easy to understand.

Finally look at the product and explore the opportunity to create women specific products. At a very simple level, I would think for a PC say there should be the opportunity to look at key boards that are women friendly. eg smaller for smaller hands, softer to protect manicured hands etc. I see product design as important, but not necessary to get the attention and the $ out of the LV handbag.

There is a big, and rapidly growing demographic in Asia, that is currently under served.

The early brand will get the prize.

Women who blog

This article is US based but still useful as a trend coming down the pipeline.

Some highlights

More than one-half (53%) of the US female Internet population of 79 million actively participated in some type of social media at least weekly.

Majority of women posted to blogs and had their own blogs.

Time on social media is coming at the cost of other media, mostly Print in reality.

Women and Digital

You may recall the fiasco that was della.com. If not visit www.della.com. A site created by Dell targetted specifically at women. On the face of it a good idea. But it got lambasted in the media for being sexist and treating women differently etc etc. There’s no winning these days!!!

Anyway..here’s a survey among women on their favourite Technology brand. Any guesses? Well it is no surprise that it is Apple. Seems they can do no wrong. And the second? Google.

The reason why women like Apple is because of it’s ease of use and record of innovation, driven by ipod.

Couple of highlights for me

In the younger age group Apple leads Sony by 2:1. But in the older (25-39) Apple and Sony are tied and in the 40+ Apple and Microsoft are tied for the top spot. Sony? Microsoft?

Over 40% of the people said they had bought a digital product in the last 6 months. That is HUGE. I can’t imagine another category, that has such a high recency of purchase.