Want to understand the difference between the way female consumer and male consumer’s brains work? “Think of the floor layout at Swedish furniture behemoth IKEA”, is the provocative suggestion of Jane Waterhouse, managing director of specialist female marketing company Sister Communications.

Do you lose yourself in intricate space after space, floor after floor, discovering nooks and crannies and details you’d never even imagined? Then you’re a woman. Enter with specific items in mind, then track them down by using the portals between departments in the shortest amount of time? You’re a man. Both parties are just as likely to emerge with a trolley of well-designed items. But women will have had an immersive experience, with part of the retail pleasure the journey of discovery and imaginary utopia. The men, meanwhile, will have delighted themselves by crossing things off a list.

Jane Waterhouse says the IKEA metaphor is a great way of bringing to life recent psychological and behavioural research on what appeals to women – and how design needs to be thought of in an holistic sense, encompassing store layout and fit-out and all forms of communications, as well as the utility and appearance of products.

Marketing to female consumers is not just about gender equity – it is about increasing profits and shareholder equity. Businesses that appeal to female consumers will see the benefits go straight to their bottom line. Why? The female market is growing.

A landmark 2009 report by Boston Consulting Group revealed that women control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion by 2014, driven by increased labour market participation and rising earning power. “As a market, women represent an opportunity bigger than China and India combined,” the report argued. Yet most companies do a bad job of appealing to women – often patronising them, or appealing to their needs and wants in superficial ways.

“Pink it and shrink it” is how Waterhouse refers to the ubiquitous practice of making an item stereotypically “cute” in an attempt to make it – a hammer, a laptop, a mobile phone – appeal to female consumers. The mistake manufacturers and marketers make is thinking that their products are genderless. In reality, most products are not genderless, but designed for men’s needs and desires – from the size of their hands, to the various roles they play in their daily lives.

What do women want? Do your research – and ask them, Waterhouse says. It may be a smaller hammer that fits her grip. Or it may be that she wants to save time, ordering online and picking up through a drive-through. The former consultant to Pacific Publications and head of program development for Weight Watchers Australia is an expert in both marketing to women and behaviour modification strategies. Her key message is that business needs to demonstrate how a brand can enhance a woman’s life, make her world easier, and make her look or feel better.

Dovetailing with the increasing market power of the female consumer is the rise of social media. Waterhouse points to high profile “mummy bloggers” such as Mia Freedman (mamamia.com.au), who started an online campaign that gathered such momentum — it forced retailer Cotton On Kids to remove an item of clothing from its shelves within six hours of her critical posting. “The point”, Waterhouse says, “is not only that new media spaces such as Facebook and Twitter allow conversations – critical and approving – about brands to gain momentum and ‘go viral’ almost instantly. It is that social media gives space and voice to the way women research and shop: researching by talking to each other and spreading the word”. ”Retailers and designers that ignore this do so at their peril” she warns.

Graphic design in women’s magazines has been transformed by this research into what women want, and what will prompt them to buy, Waterhouse says. High-end fashion shots and before-and-after spreads have been replaced by pages that feature catalogue shots of individual items of clothing - jeans, jackets, shoes and various accessories – laid out with prices and retailers listed. The clincher is a picture of a celebrity or model in the clothes or versions like them. “That really works on so many levels – cutting shopping time, flexibility in choices, but anchoring it in someone actually wearing the clothes,” Waterhouse says. The end result for women’s mags? In a declining magazine market, the categories she worked on increased or held sales, she says.

Waterhouse singles out Sportsgirl and kikki.K. as two local brands that are doing a great job in designing products, communications and retail experiences that speak to female consumers. But overall, Australian business lacks sophistication when it comes to appealing to women – and this missed opportunity is increasingly costly. “If we can get marketing departments and new product development areas to understand not just the psychological, but the physiological differences between men and women, that will change their designs right from the get-go,” Waterhouse says. “Then we’ll see the revenue opportunities come through.”

Gina McColl for Design Victoria
8 September 2010