Getting in Touch with Women

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the rise of “hetail.” The theory goes like this: more men than women got laid off in the recession (because male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing were especially hard-hit) so nowadays many husbands have taken charge of the shopping, while their wives bring home the bacon.

Sounds good. Not true.

According to new Nielsen research, women still pull the strings when it comes to the family budget. “Women control the majority of purchasing decisions in a household and their influence is growing,” Nielsen said. “Marketers have a massive opportunity to better connect women with the products they buy.”

And how can they do that? Nielsen advises the best way to reach women young and old is where they do most of their retail research: online. Women “take to the web in search of promotions and discounts, and buying products with good value is important,” Nielsen said.

And if you want these women to buy what you’re selling, how do you reach them? Nielsen has answers here as well.

A couple of years ago it put out a study called “Gender and Marketing: The Female Brain.” It states that women think differently from men (there’s a news flash) and recommends that marketers adhere to the following guidelines if they want to get in the heads of women shoppers. “Be authentic. Focus on cooperative, reciprocal, collaborative conversations. Keep messaging exploratory, not flatly declarative. Provide plenty of information. Acknowledge that she’s integrating many goals with every shopping experience and purchase.” (Just thinking out loud here but it sounds as if the same guidelines might work for us on the dating scene.)

Luxury spenders aren't spending. If there’s one thing we hate...actually, there are zillions of things we hate. But just for today let’s focus on this thing. It’s when we pull into the parking lot at Target and find that our Honda Fit won’t. All the spots are filled with Benzes, Range Rovers and Lexuses (Lexi?).

Mother of a duck! Why aren’t these people at Nordstrom? Because rich Americans aren’t spending the way they used to, says this new survey by Unity Marketing (which studies the habits of the wealthy in fine detail). Instead, they’re taking their Coutts World Cards to places like Kohl’s, Costco and Walmart. In the first quarter of 2011, “ultra-affluents,” those households in the top 2 percent, with annual incomes of $250,000 and above, shopped at Target (39.5 percent) way more often than Neiman Marcus (20.1 percent) or Bloomingdales (19.4 percent).

“When they look at a luxury brand and its high price tag, wealthy shoppers make a shrewd investment calculation, evaluating the money spent with the expected return to their lifestyle,” said Unity Marketing prez Pam Danziger. “If the product doesn’t measure up, they won’t spend the money. Rather, they’ll trade down to a cheaper yet acceptable alternative.” (Tell us about it. And while you’re up, grab us another Michelob Light.)

The planet’s most prestigious plastic. Never heard of the Coutts World Card? No reason why you should. It’s the most exclusive credit card on earth, available by invitation only. Coutts is this English bank that does wealth management for people like the queen. But even the mega-rich like to save. The Coutts card comes with a loyalty program (ahem, programme), as do all the other super-elite cards, like the AmEx Centurion, Visa Black and U.S. Bank White. In fact, over 63 percent of rich people are in at least one rewards program with a financial-services provider, compared with just 50 percent of the general population.

Money: Made in China. So if affluent Americans are shopping at Big Lots, what’s a luxury brand to do? A lot of them are going to China, where people line up down the block to spend thousands of bucks on a Prada bag. In fact, the luxury consumer market on the mainland is expanding at 25 percent a year, says research firm CLSA. In fact two, CLSA predicts Chinese customers will account for 44 percent of global luxury sales by the year 2020. In fact three, the World Luxury Association declares China will be the biggest luxury-goods market even sooner--next year.

The World Luxury what?! Does that sound odd to you? World Luxury Association? It did to us. So we Googled it. And it’s even odder than we thought it would be.

Check out the website, which claims the company is a “U.S. Government International Non-profit Organization,” even though it’s clearly a Chinese-run PR machine for all things Chinese. That’s cool. Most countries probably have similar operations. But no way they’re as funny the World Luxury Association, which bids visitors a cheery “good night” on its home page. It should. Because getting past the homepage to learn anything about the association is like trying to eat Grape-Nuts with chopsticks.

In addition to the usual -- name, location, birthday -- these are some of the user-registration questions. Body type. (Are you “well proportioned” or “robust”?) Blood group. (Huh?) Life motto. (Fill in the blank.) And drinking habits. (Your choices are “do not drink,” “occasionally drink a bit” or “drink ferocious.”) We couldn’t ever get registered. Maybe we should have clicked “occasionally drink a bit” instead.