Bridget Brennan - Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the Worlds Most Powerful Consumers

Copyright 2009, 2011 by Bridget Brennan

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Business,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Female Factorsm is a trademark of Female Factor Corp., and use is prohibited without advance written permission.

Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2009.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-307-45040-1

COVER DESIGN BY WHITNEY COOKMAN
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY GETTY IMAGES

v3.1

TO ERIK ,
who makes me happy to be alive

INTRODUCTION
WOMEN ARE FEMALES FIRST
AND CONSUMERS SECOND

WOMEN ARE

FEMALES FIRST

AND CONSUMERS SECOND

T he salesmen were all standing at attention as my husband and I walked through the doors of the car dealership. After months of searching, we knew wed found our dream car. We strode into the place with confidence. In a few short hours, wed be walking out with three thousand pounds of fine German steel. The tallest salesperson stepped forward, thrust out his hand, and said hed be happy to help us. He had a firm grip. Things were looking good.

The test drive was incredible. It was a BMW 540i, and its not called the ultimate driving machine for nothing. But I noticed something that seemed like well a flaw. At first I was afraid to mention it, even to myself. Who was I to question the magnificence of Bavarian engineering? Then I closed my eyes and imagined myself commuting to work every morning, and I could no longer keep silent. I hope you wont judge me harshly, but it was here goes the cup holders. Yes, the cup holders.

If youve ever driven a European car, you know what Im talking about. The cup holders in this model were almost comically inadequatelike tiny plastic crab claws that made a feeble grasping motion when you touched a button. The little claws didnt seem like they could handle a sippy cup, let alone the tall, battered coffee thermos that was my constant companion.

I sat through the rest of the test drive in silence, listening to the salesman deliver a stream of performance terms including torque and zero-to-sixty, just like in the commercials, before I got up the nerve to say something. This wasnt my first car-buying experience, and I knew the disdain with which many of these guysand they are overwhelmingly guysview women buyers like me. How badly would I be mocked for this? I braced myself and said the words.

Whats up with the cup holders?

He stared at me.

Theyre right here.

He moved the crab claws in and out.

Yes, but they dont seem strong enough to hold a normal cup of coffee.

Silence.

The salesperson then shot my husband a look that could be understood in any language to mean, You poor thing, how do you stand her? I cringed. My husband looked sheepish. I cringed again. And then the salesman said the first of two things that ensured he would never have my business or the business of anyone who knew me.

Europeans dont eat or drink in their cars.

While I occasionally suffer from an identity crisis, in this case I knew with 100 percent certainty that I was not, in fact, a European.

Im American and I do drink in the car. In fact, I drink a cup of coffee every morning on the way to work. Its a tall thermosyou know, the kind you buy at Starbucks.

And then he went for a second jab, this time below the belt.

Well, then why dont you just stick it between your legs?

You can guess the ending to this story. We did not purchase the dream car from this man, on principle, and found the car somewhere else a month later, after my husband discovered a website selling aftermarket cup holders specifically for the 540i. The night of the dealership incident, I went on the consumer review website Epinions.com and was overjoyed to find dozens of other people lamenting the state of the cup holders in this particular model. I felt vindicated. It appeared that the aftermarket in custom cup holders for all kinds of European cars was thriving. It wasnt just me.

These days, its never just me. Women now dominate consumer purchasing to such a degree that some companies, like Procter & Gamble, have started simply referring to consumers with the pronoun she.

In the automotive industry, for example, women buy more than half of all new cars and trucks and influence 80 percent of all automotive purchases. Influence means that if the woman doesnt like a cars coffee cup holders, the couple (if she has a spouse) walks out of the dealership empty-handed. Women not only have money, they have veto power. Its the most powerful one-two punch in the consumer economy.

As women all over the world continue joining the workforceearning their own paychecks as well as driving the spending of their spousesthey have become the alpha consumers of planet Earth. As a result, executives in almost every industry are scrambling to create products and programs with female appeal, particularly in gender-neutral and traditionally male product categories like electronics, insurance, automobiles, and finance.

The BMW story provides a classic example of how gender differences play out at their bestand worstin business. Women will pay attention to aspects of a product that salespeople, particularly male ones, may consider unimportant or irrelevant, whether its the number of electrical outlets in a new home, the style of reports submitted by a consulting firm, or the quality of cup holders in a new car. In the case of the BMW, I knew from previous experience that spilled coffee is a tough smell to get out of a car and that the odor of sour lattes would ruin the luxury car experience for me. If the salesperson had taken my issue seriously and recommended an aftermarket solution, he would have gone home with a lot more money in his commission check that day.

Most sales training programs include a mantra about knowing thy customer. Across the world, women are the customers who buy virtually everything there is to be sold. Women make the purchase or are the key influencers in about 80 percent of all consumer product sales in the United States alone. But who markets and sells products to women? The answeroverwhelminglyis men, who occupy 85 percent of all Fortune 500 corporate officer positions, They also happen to represent more than 90 percent of automotive salespeople. Its enough to make one pause and reflect on all those jokes about car salesmen. Would the jokes be different if the gender split were even? For that matter, would there still be jokes?