It’s little wonder that in many U.S. households women control the operating budget. Ditto that a majority of consumer purchase decisions are made or influenced by women. You may also want to consider that, as of 2007, the largest percentage of employed women (39%) worked in management, professional and related occupations, according to the U.S. Labor Dept.
Now, a new study provides a roadmap for marketers about reaching a key group of affluent, female consumers who spend more, know more and talk more about the products they like.
The study, conducted by The New York Times Customer Insight and Advertising Groups, offers insight into reaching female consumers in five industries: automotive, consumer electronics, fashion, finance and travel.
Based on online interviews with more than 3,000 women nationwide with household incomes of at least $100,000, the research focuses on the behavioral and personality traits that separate these influential women, dubbed “Marketing Multipliers,” from other affluent women. The study is designed to help companies increase their return on marketing investment in what is expected to be one of the worst economic cycles in U.S. history.
In the consumer-electronics category, Multipliers have almost five times as many conversations about these products than other affluent women, spend more than twice as much and more than half (52%) said they accompany family members on shopping trips to advise them on consumer electronics and other technology items, the study said.
In the travel category, Multipliers take twice as many trips and talk more than four times as often about travel-related industries — including hotels, airlines and car rentals — than other affluent women.
And in the investment category, 45% of Multipliers follow up on new investment products they see advertised and 53% of Multipliers in the automotive category “follow information related to new safety features,” the study said.
“It behooves marketers to understand there are women who are expert in these categories,” said Jeffrey Graham, executive director, Customer Insight. “Multipliers are voracious across all media channels; it’s not online versus offline.” Advertisers, he added, need to shape their messages to the segment, not the channel.
While Marketing Multipliers have the same exact demographic characteristics of other affluent women, they differ in several important ways. For example, Multipliers are twice as likely to post blogs, or to publish their own Web pages, compared with other women. They also are discriminating in vetting their sources: 71% of Multipliers said it is important for an ad to be “on a Web site that I consider trustworthy.”
Multipliers have a “voracious” appetite for the Internet, Grahama said. “A lot of them are bloggers themselves and a lof of them comment on blogs, so [for marketers], being involved in the online space is important.”
The study also suggests that affluent women have a bit of an altrusitic streak. Helping other people, learning new things and knowing people from different walks of life are much more important to Multipliers than to other affluent women. They also tap into new trends: Multipliers are more than three times more likely to say being an authority (on what’s hot and what’s not) is important to them.
“Multipliers like to share information with other people and get a vicarious pleasure of recommending a product,” Graham said. “Advertising becomes a way of drawing in Multipliers.”
