Marketing to Women
Author: Martha Barletta, Tom Peters
List Price: $23.00
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ISBN: 0793159636
Publisher: Dearborn Trade Publishing (12 December, 2002)
Sales Rank: 6,583
Average Customer Rating: 4.96 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Erases all Doubts
If you ever doubted that women represent a woefully overlooked marketing opportunity, this book will erase those doubts once and for all. First, Ms. Barletta sizes this market in sheers number, dollars and cents. Then she demolishes the many myths and misconceptions that have kept marketers from effectively recognizing or reaching it.
To do so, she initially takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the latest finding of evolutionary psychologists, biochemists and those who study the structure of the human brain, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that, (duh), women are very different than men. But seriously, in ways that have a profound effect on how they arrive at purchasing decisions.
She then introduces us to her proprietary GenderTrends? marketing model, which is interesting although unlikely to reach the stature of BCG's four-quadrant matrix. (Doesn't every consultant have to have some sort of "proprietary" model?). What this model leads to, though, are some very interesting observations on how and why certain messages or approaches will work with women far better than they might work with men.
Lastly, she concludes with a long section devoted to practical applications based on her insights. Some you may think make sense, others not. But given the enormous purchasing power controlled by this segment, it would be a mistake for any marketer to ignore this well-written resource.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Insightful!
As a consumer group, women represent an enormous opportunity, but chances are your company is missing out on them. Author Martha Barletta says most marketers fail to capitalize on this lucrative market. They don't realize its potential or understand fundamental gender differences. As a result, their marketing fails to communicate with women, let alone persuade them. Barletta, a consultant specializing in marketing to women consumers, offers a book heavy on theory and long on detail. Except for a few examples of how ads are executed, the book lacks case studies that would bring these theories to life. Still, Barletta provides good advice on practical applications of these ideas about gender culture. She sheds light on the myths and realities of marketing to women, and provides essays by female experts in the field. What a pity that it all reads like a textbook. Given that, we from getAbstract target this rather educational tome as more appropriate for people who study marketing than for people who do marketing, although thoughtful marketers might still want to take a look.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The Sweetest Spot of the Sweet Spot
As a marketer and author of several books it usually surprises people when I tell them I've read perhaps three marketing books in my life cover-to-cover. Marketing books tend to peter out after the first two or three chapters, putting their authors in the position of having to pump a lot of air into their pages to get enough literary bulk to justify cranking up the printing presses. Marti Barletta's "Marketing to Women" is the fourth marketing book I've read cover-to-cover. Keeping in mind that women account directly and indirectly for an estimated 80% of buying in the consumer economy, "marketing to Women" is a proverbial "must read" for everyone in marketing. Barletta's marketing wisdom, spiced here and there with a dash of puckerish humor, if not enough to turn a person into a marketer of wizardly proportions, is surely enough to at the very least double a marketer's effectiveness.
Barletta claims that "Marketing to Women" is the first book ever that deals with the "nuts and bolts" of marketing to women. She's probably right, and if so, that claim suggests how much out of tune most marketing is with reality.
No serious reader of this remarkable, far-reaching though accessible book, will come to the last period of the last sentence of its last chapter without knowing a great deal more about themselves as well as how to more effectively market to the biggest market on the planet -- women! Barletta explores seminal differences between men and women that everyone, marketer or not, would do well to understand for personal as well as for professional reasons. For instance, what does it mean in terms of differences in shopping and buying behavior that when men win in a game, their testosterone levels increase, but women's testosterone levels increase whether or not they win if they played a good game? It means a great deal, and "Marketing to Women" tells you why. Clue: It has to do with customary - and crucial - differences between men and women in relationship nurturing and management.
Anyone in marketing who does not know that adults over 40 have become the New Customer Majority are about as prepared for today's marketplace realities as a wheelwright applying for a job at General Motors. People aged 40 and older constitute the only high-growth consumer population. The sweet spot of this population is, of course, boomers, but the sweetest spot of all is boomer women. If you don't know how these women think, feel, shop and buy, you can only play a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey kind of marketing that relies on trial-and-error speculative approaches.
Barletta draws on new discoveries in brain science and human genome studies to retire the controversial idea that was most in vogue during the 1960s and 70s that held that aside from reproductive systems, no essential differences exist between males and females. Au contraire; the differences are immense and this shows up decisively in shopping and buying behavior. Yet, aside from personal and household products, and despite women accounting for 80% or so of consumer purchases, differences between males and females are widely ignored by marketers. In fact, as Barletta aptly shows, marketing reflects a clear-cut bias against the feminine values that characterize most of what happens in the consumer marketplace. Go figure. No -- read Marti Barletta's book.
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