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Women's hearts offer clues to markets
By Li Xiaowei (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-22 06:14
SHANGHAI: When marketing to Chinese female consumers, businesses must bear in
mind what they want. But that is not easy because of dramatic changes to women
in the past few decades.
"Departing from the archetype as reproducers, wives and mothers, today's
Chinese women are strongly ambitious in the same sense as men," said Tom
Doctoroff, Northeast Asia area director of the advertising conglomerate J.
Walter Thompson.
On a 100-point scale, Chinese women rate the importance of success a 74, way
higher than their counterparts in Japan (28), Singapore (45) and Indonesia (49),
Doctoroff said, quoting a report by Asian Market Intelligence.
Chinese women rate wealth a 53, also the highest among Asian women, he told a
marketing conference on Friday in Shanghai.
A Chinese seller waits for customers in a
lingerie shop in Shanghai October 20,
2005.[Reuters] | "Hard as steel inside, they look
as gentle as HelloKitty," Doctoroff said. "When they advance, their inner
strength is wrapped in feminine gentility, in line with social mandates."
A balance between ambition and femininity is most suitable to describe
Chinese women, he stressed.
Business executives from about 60 foreign-invested companies in Shanghai
attended the one-day conference, entitled "Enticing the Female Consumer in
China."
"The most dramatic changes have happened to Chinese women in the past
decades," said Jesse Price, chairperson of the marketing committee of the
American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai, the host of the conference.
A Chinese woman walks past an advertisement
banner for a shopping centre in Liaocheng, east China's Shandong province
in this picture taken on October 4,
2005.[newsphoto/file] | "American businesses are
fascinated to know their female consumers, not just facts and figures but also
the cultural context underneath."
Curiosity apart, such a conference was imperative because Chinese women now
are the major decision-makers in household purchases, including real estate and
automobiles, Price said.
More 60 per cent of women make decisions concerning purchases of food and
daily commodities, and close to 40 per cent make decisions on purchases of
durable goods, according to a survey by Sinomonitor International, a market
research institution.
Yue-Sai Kan, award-winning television personality and the founder of the
Yue-Sai cosmetics, shared her experience of marketing cosmetics in China.
"Marketing to young women in today's China is like marketing to young women
anywhere in the world, yet older women are a lot more traditional," she said.
When talking about a recently identified female consumer group dubbed Heidi
(highly educated independent degree-carrying individual), Lucy Johnston, editor
of GDR's Global Innovation Report, said there are a lot of Heidis in Shanghai.
"They may not be so clued-up yet, but they are learning quickly," Johnston
said.
There are now 10 million Heidis in the European market, and they are being
described as intelligent, influential and free-thinking shoppers, purchasing
products across a much broader range of sectors than ever before, Johnston said.
(China Daily 10/22/2005 page1)
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