To start with the most startling of stats, according to a report from 2000, “women purchase or influence the purchase of 80% of all consumer goods and influence 80% of all healthcare decisions.”



This figure is not simply limited to the market sectors traditionally perceived as “female” either. In 2003 the Consumer Electronics Association (of the USA it should be noted) reported that, “they [women] are involved in 89% of all consumer electronics purchasing decisions and accounted for more than $55 billion in revenue in 2003”. As an aside, despite this staggering statistic, over 75% of women surveyed complained about being “ignored, patronised, or offended by salespeople when shopping for electronics.”

Similarly, since 2003 women have been in the majority of shoppers online and women over 55 have increased their spending online by 129% in the last few years.

In the DIY market The Wall Street Journal reports that women buy 61% of major home fix-up products accounting for more than 80% or $70 billion worth of home improvement products. And, whilst traditionally, wives have been the buying force in home sales; today's single women are buying homes at twice the rate of single men.

As if technology and DIY were not enough, the last traditional male dominated market – sport – also provides some revelatory figures. Once again US consumer figures are being used, but given its position as the world's largest marketplace, this isn't inappropriate for our purposes.

Reports by Oppenheimer Funds and BusinessWeek Online explain these figures to some extent. Oppenheimer Funds state that, “In dual income families, 30% of working women out-earn their husbands” whilst BusinessWeek report that “in three decades men's median income has barely budged, while women's has soared 63%. The number of women earning $100,000 or more has tripled in the last 10 years, and 43% of people with assets in excess of half a million dollars are women.”

Any impression that women are unable and unwilling to compete with men in every sector and, indeed, that they are not more influential in almost every consumer market must be dispelled.

Differences

It has long been held true that men and women differ in their thought processes - but in what ways and to what ends?

Recent studies of the brain's emotional centre, the amygdala, have shown that it is wired to different parts of the brain in men and women. It is accepted that oestrogen and testosterone permanently affect behaviour, but this new finding has caused a radical reassessment of traditional perceptions of difference between the sexes. As Larry Cahill, a neurobiologist at the University of California at Irvine says;

“The bias of mainstream neuroscience for the last 25 years has been, ‘OK, sure, there's some sex differences way down deep in the brain in this little structure called the hypothalamus, but otherwise the brains of men and women were pretty much the same.' That was wrong, wrong as can be. Sex matters a lot in how the brain works.”

Whilst this will not necessarily come as shocking news to marketers, it is important to note as it indicates that the traditional assessment of the differences between female and male thought processes as being purely “emotional” falls rather short of the mark and is, in some ways, disingenuous.

Indeed, there are negative connotations with the word when applied to women, suggesting as it does unpredictability, a lack of reasoning or a favouring of intuitive decisions over logic and the like. This in turn leads to a belief that women, by their nature, are whimsical and difficult to market to given their apparent lack of predictable responses.

This could not be further from the truth; women are as predictable as men in their reactions as the study of the amygdala has shown. It is simply that those responses are different to those of men.

Firstly, men pay less attention to people than to the goods or services desired – women, by contrast, are “people powered” preferring to connect with others.

Secondly, men operate best solo while women prefer groups. “For men individuality, freedom, autonomy, and independence are valued. Women see themselves as part of an ensemble group. They think ‘we' not ‘me'.”

The third difference can be characterised by the phrase “men do unto themselves, women do unto others”. Women see themselves as parts of a community first and then individuals.

Finally, men are driven by envy whilst women are driven by empathy. Women are interested in belonging and being understood more than they are in winning. Men want to be admired but women want to be appreciated.

To recap then – men and women are intrinsically different in their reactions to stimuli. However, these differences are not governed by hormones but by the hardwiring of the brain. Consequently there is absolutely nothing to suggest that women are any more irrational or unpredictable than man. They are simply different.