YOUR BIGGEST GROWTH MARKET IS ALREADY HERE
If I were to ask you to name the world’s biggest growth markets, what would you say?
China?
India?
You’d be right with either of those answers, because they’re both major growth markets. But there’s another massive one that’s right here at home, no matter where you call home, and that’s women. Thanks to women’s increased educational attainment, labor-force participation, and earning power, women are now considered one of the world’s largest growth markets. A Harvard Business Review article put it this way: “In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than twice as big.”1
I’ve dedicated most of my career to studying women in the consumer economy. It’s not a typical job, and you can imagine the jokes I hear when I tell people what I do. They usually revolve around the idea that women’s spending is trivial and even frivolous, as if women were only interested in shoes, handbags, and sparkly things. While there is nothing wrong with any of these purchases, this stereotype does a disservice to women and is a potential lost opportunity for sales professionals.
“You should see what my wife does to my credit card!” is a comment I hear often. When someone says this to me, I just smile, and then tell that person the real reasons women drive so much consumer spending. That’s when the jokes stop, and the conversations get a lot more interesting.2
In virtually every society in the world, women are primary caregivers for both children and the elderly. Are there exceptions? Sure, but this is a role that remains overwhelmingly female. As primary caregivers, women typically assume responsibility for buying on behalf of everyone in their households. They’re the chief purchasing officers for their families. You already know that mothers buy on behalf of their children and that women buy for spouses and partners. That’s just the beginning. Women buy on behalf of their older parents, their in-laws, their businesses, and often, friends, neighbors, and community organizations, since women volunteer at higher rates than men do across all age groups and educational levels.3
Adding up all this spending and decision-making on behalf of others is how we arrive at the reality of women’s buying power and influence, which is felt across industries. For example, women make 80 percent of the health-care decisions for their families.4 When you earn the business and loyalty of one woman, you have an opportunity to reach the other people in her household, as well as her social and business networks, because she is buying on behalf of so many others. Women are the gateway to everybody else.
WELCOME TO THE WOMEN’S MULTIPLIER EFFECT
As gateways to other people, women have what I call a multiplier effect on sales.5 Even when a woman isn’t paying for something with her own money, she is typically a strong influencer—or veto vote—behind somebody else’s purchase. All around us, we see examples of how this plays out. For instance, if a husband and wife look at a model home and the woman doesn’t like it, the couple is unlikely to buy it.
This multiplier effect has several dimensions that can impact your sales success. One aspect of it, for example, is the way women are prime drivers of word-of-mouth publicity (which now includes social sharing online) for the people and companies with which they do business. This is because in female culture, women tend to talk about their buying experiences with one another, routinely discussing topics such as what they bought, where they bought it, what kind of deal they got (if they got one), and what kind of service they received, if it was memorable. Typically, men don’t talk to their male friends about these topics with the same frequency and depth that women do.
Women talk about these subjects because they know their female friends usually have the same responsibilities they do in terms of provisioning and procurement for the household. Women also share the same pressures to meet cultural standards for grooming, personal appearance, meal preparation, home cleanliness, and child-rearing, to name just a handful of society’s “gendered” expectations. As such, they often feel that it’s nothing less than their duty to inform their friends about great resources and warn them away from bad experiences, in the spirit of being helpful. This is one reason a happy female customer can generate a huge rate of return in word-of-mouth publicity. She represents a broad range of other potential customers.
Another aspect of the multiplier effect is that women often assume responsibility for marking life’s milestones within a household or family—or even an office—and all the celebrations, events, and gift giving that go along with them, from baby showers to birthdays to funerals. These milestones are catalysts for spending and marketplace engagement.
Women also perform huge amounts of emotional labor. This phrase has more than one definition, but for our purposes I’m using the term emotional labor to refer to the invisible activities involved in caregiving and maintaining social relationships. These include actions such as anticipating and accommodating other people’s emotional needs; organizing social activities that bring people together; remembering other people’s appointments and whereabouts; keeping track of other people’s sizes, favorite foods, and general likes and dislikes; and demonstrating a sustained interest in the well-being of others.
Emotional labor is a woman saying to her partner, “Next Thursday is the first anniversary of Tom’s wife’s death. We should invite him over for dinner so he’s not alone that night.” This sentiment sounds simple, but when you break it down, it’s like a five-act play in which a woman is directing, producing, and starring. The first act is remembering the anniversary of the death. The second act is making a plan to invite Tom for dinner. The third act is reaching out to Tom and inviting him. The fourth act is deciding what’s going to happen that evening (dinner at home or in a restaurant). And the fifth act is executing the evening’s activities. Many women will tell you they have several mental checklists in their heads running at all times, and while they won’t call these checklists emotional labor, that’s often what they are.
All of this means that even if your customer doesn’t tell you how busy she is, you can assume she has a lot going on and will be grateful if you make it easy and convenient to do business with you. Do men engage in emotional labor too? Yes, of course. However, studies show that women engage in substantially more of these activities throughout their lives, and moreover, it is a cultural expectation that they do so.6 From a buying perspective, the implication is that women’s “radars” are permanently scanning for products and services that the people close to them might need or want, and this impacts how they approach the marketplace. I sometimes think entire industries would collapse overnight if women stopped being so thoughtful. Consider the impact to the greeting card industry alone!
AN ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT
While women have long held the role of gatekeepers for their households, they’ve unleashed a tidal wave of change in our economy in a very short time. When you consider that as recently as 1974 it was difficult for an unmarried woman in the United States to get a credit card in her own name—until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed—the pace of change in two generations has been nothing less than astonishing. Let’s look at a few eye-opening stats that provide context for how your business and sales strategies can adapt.
Women Dominate Higher Education. Women earn the majority of associate’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and even doctoral degrees in the United States.7 This is part of a global shift: women are outpacing men’s higher education participation in many world markets.8 Education has catapulted women into fields that were traditionally dominated by men, like law, medicine, and science, to name just a few.9 If we consider that someone’s educational attainment is a good predictor of his or her future earning power, the data on graduation rates shows us that women’s status as “alpha consumers” will likely continue for the next two to three decades at least. This means women aren’t just the customers of today; they’re the customers of the future. Here’s how the numbers break down in the United States:
• bachelor’s degrees: 57 percent earned by women
• master’s degrees: 59 percent earned by women
• doctoral degrees: 53 percent earned by women
Women in the Workforce: The Biggest Revolution of Our Time. Women’s participation in the labor force has been one of the most sweeping and peaceful revolutions in modern history, impacting every facet of society. Stereotypes to the contrary, most mothers of young children now work outside the home. In fact, 70 percent of women with children under eighteen participate in the US labor force, and the overwhelming majority of these women (75 percent) work full time.10 This is an enormous change from 1975, when less than half of all mothers with children under eighteen were in the labor force. Despite the numbers, employed women still perform more unpaid household chores and caregiving responsibilities than employed men,11 which means that providing them with convenient ways to conduct business with you is crucial to staying relevant with this market.
At the other end of the age spectrum, more people than ever are working into their later years. Because women have a longer life expectancy than men and typically shoulder more eldercare responsibilities, we can expect they will be a significant part of this growing population of older workers, which will have an impact on both their consumer needs and time constraints.
More Women Are Breadwinners. What does a breadwinner look like? If you’re thinking of a man in a suit, it’s time to update that image and make it more inclusive of women. Mothers are the primary or sole earners for 40 percent of households with children under eighteen.12 This represents a sea change in our society, and there are several factors behind it. Not only are women earning more degrees and engaged in the labor force in large numbers, but there are more single-parent households in our society, and women overwhelmingly dominate these households.13
Women Control Wealth. Women control 51 percent of personal wealth.14 They are wealth creators due to their workforce participation and entrepreneurialism, and wealth inheritors because of their longer life expectancies. Both of these factors impact women’s decision-making and financial needs. Forty percent of new entrepreneurs are women,15 and women-owned businesses account for 39 percent of all US firms.16 We will hear from women business owners throughout these pages and learn the innovative ways they serve their own customers.
Women Hold Most Management and Professional Positions. Women account for 52 percent of all workers employed in management, professional, and related occupations.17 One implication of this number is that B2B sales are now increasingly inclusive of women. Many forward-looking businesses are fielding more diverse account teams to reflect the customer bases they serve.
Women Dominate the Big Social Networks. Females are the dominant users of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest,18 and Snapchat.19 We all know that social sharing has never been more important for businesses in terms of publicity, reputation, and sales. What we don’t often hear is that women are the primary users on most of the biggest social networks. This is another key aspect of their “multiplier effect” on businesses.
Caregiving. Globally, women undertake the majority of unpaid care, including housework, childcare, and eldercare.20 The numbers vary by country, but overwhelmingly, women’s unpaid work functions as a second or third job that must be maintained along with any paid work outside the home. This is one of the biggest differences in life experience that women bring to the table as customers: they’re often evaluating the wants and needs of other people as they make buying decisions, and juggling multiple caregiving responsibilities.21
These stats paint an extraordinary picture of women’s economic impact. Yet women are still absent from leadership positions in the corporate world. While women make up the majority of consumers, men make up 95 percent of CEOs for S&P 500 companies, and they almost always lead male-dominated management teams.22 Women-founded companies (in which all founders are female) receive only 2 percent of venture capital funding.23 As these numbers show, there’s still an enormous gender gap between women buyers and the leadership of the companies that market and sell to them. My philosophy is that whenever there’s a gap, there’s an opportunity to fill it. That’s why we’re here. Closing this gap with insights and information will help put you one step ahead of the competition and create more satisfied customers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Women are one of the world’s biggest growth markets, and meeting their needs as customers is key to succeeding in the modern economy.
• Women have a multiplier effect on the businesses and sales professionals that serve them well.
• Understanding the pace of women’s educational and economic progress is fundamental to staying relevant with this market.
ACTIVATING YOUR INSIGHTS
• If you were to rank your business on a scale of 1 to 10 on its effectiveness in connecting with modern women consumers, with 10 being the highest, what number would you give? Use this number as a benchmark for future progress.
• How have you seen differences in gender culture play out in your own customer interactions? What did you learn from these experiences?
• Categorize your customer data by gender. Can you identify specific buying patterns and preferences by examining the information this way?