In the United States, advertising teams use wrong marketing strategies when targeting women. According to Silverstein (2008), women buy goods and services differently from men; however, a majority of businesses do not realize or understand the purchasing habits of women. One of the prominent reasons why most businesses managed by men are out of touch with such an essential consumer group is inadequate research on female consumer base. Seemingly, they do not know how women investigate, buy, use and recommend products. Secondly, most executives do not have personal experience of women time pressures especially among working mothers.
Barletta (2013), author of Marketing to Women Effectively elucidates that in 85 percent of households, women indeed are the key decision-makers in regard to consumer goods and grocery items. It is, therefore, unfortunate that women are always not included in the development, design, determination of price, as well as creating marketing programs. Financial services executives do not recognize the services that women receive from financial advisers and in most cases give more attention to men even when the female earns more than male. This is also observed in the healthcare sector where the health-care executives do not appreciate the effort and frustration felt by women when they leave their jobs to take a child to hospital and have to wait for long periods of time to be attended to.
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In demographic segmentation, audiences are defined by factors such as gender, age, income, marital status, which are usually used by marketers to distinguish their target audience profile. Psychographic segmentation involves the classification and identification of groups of people based on their interests, habits, emotions, preferences and attitudes ( Lin, 2012 ). Psychographic segmentation acknowledges that people are different and are motivated by different values, lifestyles and personalities. On the other hand, demographic segmentation focuses on generic data points such as age, occupation, and location that can be misleading in terms of perceived commonality among different groups.
Conclusively, advertising targeting women in the United States is generally not as effective as it ought to be. The main cause for bad advertising is inadequate research on the female consumer base and male executives should not ignore the female economy. Companies should start sizing and segmenting their market and invest in substantial research resources. As the blogs state, women form a significant portion of the market, and it is important for marketers to spend time to study and invest in strategies that would appeal to women.
References
Barletta, M. (2013). Marketing to women: How to understand, reach, and increase your share of the world's largest market segment . Dearborn Trade Publishing.
Lin, C. F. (2012). Segmenting customer brand preference: demographic or psychographic. Journal of Product & Brand Management , 11 (4), 249-268.
Silverstein, M. J., Fiske, N., & Butman, J. (2008). Trading Up: why consumers want new luxury goods--and how companies create them . Penguin.
