woking women as customers

Women typically resist identification by gender. Appeal to their sense of self by reaching out to them, instead, according to their interests, lifestyles and occupations.

Provide information

WORKING Women consumers tend to be less impulsive and more strategic. Cater to their need for information by making key knowledge—such as price, availability, return policy, etc.—readily available and easy to find, and by showing them how to actually use your products when they buy them.

Offer choices

WORKING Women tend to be choosy consumers. And while they don’t always have the time to research their purchases before they make them, they like to have options. Win them over with variety—different colors, sizes and styles, for instance—so that they can own their own selection.

Enable conversations

WORKING Women don’t just make purchases; they discuss them. When you impress a female customer—and likewise, when you disappoint one—she’ll tell all of her friends. Smart businesses will embrace women’s word of mouth and will find ways to both encourage and amplify it.

Build relationships, service

While men make purchase decisions based upon statistics and ratings, WORKING women make them based on their relationship with the seller. Develop positive relationships with female consumers by offering them unrivaled attention. Grow and sustain them with responsive, flexible and personalized customer service.


Helpful advice
Consider testing new products and services on working women, as they tend to be more willing than men to try new things, especially when those things might save them time or money.
Avoid gender-stereotyping your products; making your goods pink, for instance, won’t suddenly make them appeal to female consumers.
Just as important as who women are is what women buy; while they purchase female staples such as make-up and apparel, women also buy gender-neutral products such as cars and technology.
Women appreciate and demand fair pricing; when giving female customers price quotes, include all taxes and fees in order to build trust with them.
While price matters a great deal to women, don’t assume that discounts will trump service; women are willing to spend more when businesses court them creatively and attentively.

THE APPEAL SHOULD FOCUS ON THE FOLLOWING:
1.PRODUCT
-Functionality;
-Quality;
-Appearance;
-Packaging;
-Brand;
-Service;
-Support;
-Warranty FOR CONSUMER DURABLE.
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2.PRICE
-List Price;
-OFFER Discounts;
-Financing LIKE CREDIT CARD FACILITY;
-Leasing Options;
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3.PLACE
-shops, near the workplace.
-shopping mall, for the week ends.
-online shopping
-home/ office delivery
-ordering on mobile.
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4.PROMOTION
-mobile advertising
-magazine advertising
-tv advertising
-newspaper advertising

branding realted to ads

The world of advertising is perhaps the place that epitomizes the contradictions of women as consumers. Women's faces and bodies are used endlessly in advertising to convince people to buy certain products. The many ads we see each day create roles for women. The image of the 'housewife' or woman working in the home is commonly used to sell household goods. Think of the mother selling laundry powder or Aunt Jemima selling syrup. Repeatedly using these images gives the impression that women have a limited role in our society: all women want is shiny floors and the best cookies. These images reinforce gender stereotypes and sometimes also racial ones. The use of the housewife in advertising belittles the wide variety of unpaid work women do in the home.

Ads also adopt positive and empowering language and concepts for retail purposes. For example, Nike has an ad campaign explaining that including girls in sports improves girls' self esteem. However, this message is only for the benefit of women Nike is 'targeting' - women who have enough money to buy Nike shoes. Naomi Klein explains that, "although girls may indeed rule in North America, they are still sweating in Asia and Latin America, making T-shirts with the 'Girls Rule' slogan on them and Nike running shoes that will finally let girls into the game." Women who sew the shoes in China receive barely enough money to survive, thirteen cents an hour, and little opportunity for any leisure at all.²

Women are figured in ads to sell a range of products from cars to vacations. The female image almost always fits a western beauty myth: women are frequently thin, young, able-bodied, heterosexual and light-skinned. More recently, advertisers have begun to use an idealized image of men to sell products; men pictured are strong, lean and muscular. The result of seeing these images many times is that young people, especially young women, think their bodies are inadequate; by attempting to fit the image, some develop eating disorders. Young men are now more frequently using steroids to look like the men in ads. Unrealistic and repeated media images can be bad for our health. American feminist and ad-critic Jean Kilbourne says that in advertising, "what we learn is that a woman's body is just another piece of merchandise. Not only is she a thing, she's a thing that's for sale. Women's bodies and products are completely interchangeable in the world of ads." Kilbourne sums up the underlying message of many ads as: "You're ugly, you're disgusting, buy something."³

The world of advertising needs constant refueling to keep itself in business. To keep us buying new things, advertisers create symbolic obsolescence. This means that advertisers give us the message that old things are out of style and we must have new fashions.⁴ We are 'behind the times' unless we have the latest thing. This manufactures demand - it creates the need for certain products where there was no need before the ad told us so.

Another more recent phenomenon is target advertising. Some companies gather information on consumers' spending habits. One of the newest ways is through points cards such as Air Miles or cards from a particular store. When we fill out applications to these programmes, we give out information about ourselves: how old we are, where we live, how much money we earn. Then when we use the cards our spending habits can be tracked. Advertisers buy this information and use it to shape their next advertising campaign. The same thing is done in on-line shopping on the Internet: companies gather information about their customers and sell it to advertisers. The result is advertising which is targeted directly at us. This can make ads difficult to escape. Our visual environment is becoming polluted with messages to buy more, and it becomes hard to know the difference between items we really need, and items we can do without.

long term

First you need to know the long-term effects of marketing activities on your brand equity. Consumers develop their knowledge towards your brand from responses to marketing activities. They hear your brand’s name on the radio, see your products on web searches, and read news and reports about your company in magazines and newspapers. Today they have millions of channels in which to know you, understand you, and develop a personal feeling towards you. You feel this in sales trends, interaction with you through customer service, and talking with friends about you on Facebook or Twitter. One sentence: Consumers change their brand knowledge by responding to past, current and future marketing activities.

Therefore, it is of great importance for a company to have long-term marketing strategies that constantly reinforce brand. While doing so, one of the most essential considerations is the consistency in the nature and amount of marketing support the brand receives. Kevin Lane Keller, the notable author of Strategic Brand Management, once said: “Brands with shrinking research and development and marketing communication budgets run the risk of becoming technologically disadvantaged-or even obsolete-as well as out-of-date, irrelevant, or forgotten.”

Brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Disney, and others have been remarkably consistent in their strategies once they achieved a preeminent market leadership position. But being consistent doesn’t mean avoiding any changes. On the contrary, necessary innovative changes and tactical shifts in sync with the nature of the changing market will help a brand maintain strategic trust and the right direction. These changes include pricing adjustment, improvement of product features, creative slogans, and other tactical shifts. Although the specific tactics can change, marketers should retain and develop the key elements of equity for a brand where appropriate.

· Successful Example-Burberry, a British high-end brand remains in the fashion world with the consistency of its iconic imagery (trench coat and Prorsum horse insignia), but has made changes from an expensive raincoat designer to a contemporary and traditional fashion designer.

· Failed Example-GM, once the global automotive leader, lost its individual brand image because of inconsistent marketing activities. Although they had many brands, many of these brands both looked alike and functioned the same, which forced them to spend separate marketing efforts marketing cars that were for all intents and purposes identical. The biggest and only objective of GM was to increase sales numbers through brute-force promotion rather than cashing in on brand equity.

What happened to GM is a lesson to all marketers no matter how big and powerful they are. “Reinforcing brand equity overtime requires consistency in the amount and nature of the supporting marketing program for the brand.”–Kevin Lane Keller

A successful brand has to stand for something. When you attach variations/adjustments under a brand make sure the core brand image is untouched. You cannot do all things to all people and the more you try the more you risk sinking the ship. Focus on your branding efforts on your target market.