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The Power of the Purse

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The Power of the Purse

How Smart Businesses Are Adapting to the World's Most Important Consumers — Women

FT Prentice Hall,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

If you want to sell to women, avoid empty slogans and pink walls. Instead, research your market.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

This book combines the story of women’s new economic power with case studies that detail how major companies have revamped their marketing to target women customers. Author Fara Warner, a journalist, knows her beat. In fact, she sometimes gets carried away with the facts, and her style can be dry and predictable. Still, getAbstract.com finds this book invaluable for marketers and people interested in women’s emerging economic clout, a major social and demographic trend. Warner provides specific advice that will help you avoid costly, time-consuming marketing mistakes as you pursue these crucial customers.

Summary

Not Just Shopping

Since the U.S. economy relies heavily on consumer spending, marketing to women is critical. Studies show that women control 94% of the decisions to buy home furnishings, 91% of those about home sales, 51% about consumer electronics, and 60% about cars and trucks. On the road, half of all business travelers are women.

Women have gained economic power as they have joined the job market. Some 60% of adult women now work, twice the proportion of working women in 1955. As a result, families have undergone dramatic structural changes. In 1955, 80% of American families included two parents; the father worked while the mother stayed home. In 2003, only 50% of American families looked this way. In 2000, about 42% of families were headed by women and 58% by men, and 25% of women older than 15 had never married. Many single people are now their family’s sole provider.

Women are taking more control over family finances. In about 30% of U.S. married couples, women earn more than men. Changes in longevity, education and health mean that women will increase their lifelong earning power and become heirs to more money. A Conde Nast study found that between ...

About the Author

Fara Warner has written about marketing for the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Brandweek and other national publications. She has a master’s degree from Columbia University and received a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan.

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