What way? I often ask. The way, they say, in which education, money, and economic independence have made us what we are today. Too often as American women, we take for granted all those foundational elements--education, the right to vote, access to capital, the right to own a business--which have made us powerful consumers, powerful voting blocks, and powerful in the country's economy. It isn't until they listen to what is happening to women in other countries that they begin to see the power of what we have in American society today--and that power isn't just about what we can buy. Indeed it is far more about what we can produce from the education that we receive.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:u2JK9K4i8HkJ:www.ksa-technopak.com/pdf/DTC%2520Presentation%2520-%25201%2520August%25202006.pdf+india+women+and+consumers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=79&gl=us

The "butterflies" make up 50 percent of the women in the urban affluent class. As the nickname implies these women are all about the looks. They are moving rapidly to luxury goods, especially high-tech products like cellphones and MP3 players. But the second largest group--"old luxury"--make up 32 percent and are not as much about the "bling." These women have grown up with luxury, as the report notes, and may tend toward more traditional luxury goods.

Notably, the third group is called "Mrs. Rationality," a nickname that reflects a more logical, less indulgent buying group. It would be easy to assume that affluent urban women would act and buy alike. But the differences in these three groups show how fast-paced change can shape and mold consumers in unusual ways.

Even when it comes to big purchases such as cars or luxury items, a significant minority of Chinese women--23 percent--indicated that they could make those purchases on their own. This is a shift from conventional wisdom as Ernst & Young's report succinctly points out: "...general assumptions were that men being the sole or main breadwinner would also therefore act as the main decision maker when it comes to financial planning on spending."

Some of the eBrandmarketing.com blogs will appear in this forum over the next few months, but I am working toward creating two separate blogs...but with the same end goal in mind.

I want to start a conversation about the global power of the purse. What issues are you facing as marketers in the global market? Do you recognize women as an important part of your marketing mix when you head overseas? Do you have success stories of reaching women around the world? What obstacles have you found? What would you like to know more about in terms of research and case studies?

As we head into the Marketing to Women Conference May 8-9, 2008 in Chicago, I would like to get the conversation started about the importance of the women's market globally and the economic power of women around the world.

Here is a link to a blog on "womenomics" and pdf of the study: http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2006/04/womenomics.html.

What intrigued me about these two ideas--women and the Internet--as Whitman spoke was that The Economist may have missed a larger point. The economic equation may not be that women are more important than the Internet, China, or India in terms of economic growth, but that women have been a primary reason for why the Internet, China, and India have become so important to our global economic growth.

We've also shown the rest of the world what happens when women become full-fledged participants in our country’s economy with access to education, business capital and political power.

Now we have a woman running for president and all eyes are on us--American women--again.

Over the next year, I'll explore two major topics. First, where do women stand in America? Are we moving forward or backward in pay parity? Will we or won't we vote for Hillary? How are smart marketers approaching us? I'll also be posting blogs on ebrandmarketing.com on these and other topics so look for the blog there as well as host of other great guest bloggers.

A quick aside, check out the new Volvo commercial for its sport utility. I caught it watching “Good Morning America” this morning. It shows a female cyclist powering her way up mountain passes as her family keeps her going--videotaping her ride and showing it immediately on the video screens in the car. The ad manages to show off all the options in the car, including a rear seat that folds flat so she can take a break or pile her bike and all her gear in the back, even as it makes a statement about the power of women today.

Does this ad reveal how much we’ve changed as consumers since I finished my book? For more information click on www.thepowerofthepurse.com. Or does it show that marketers are beginning to understand how to depict women--as mothers, wives, athletes--in more holistic ways even as they get their points across about their products? For Volvo, it was certainly a step forward from the brand's concept car of a few years ago with its "ponytail holder" in the headrest.

But I'm also expanding my interests and research to explore the global power of the purse. I'll be pursuing that topic in this blog and in speaking engagements this year as I pursue a new idea for a book.

Global businesses and developing countries in Asia to Africa to South America are tapping into the global power of women. This is a two-part story in my view. First, governments--particularly in developing countries--are recognizing that women can be a primary key to creating robust economies. Extensive research shows that educating a girl can lead directly to economic growth.

The other part of the story is how companies are tapping into the consumer power of women in countries such as China, India and Brazil. Indeed all around the world, companies are realizing that women--no surprise here--are the most important consumers in those countries as well. I'll start in China next week--exploring how women have become major consumers for products as diverse as cars, financial products, real estate and home improvement.

I'll look to you for ideas and suggestions--and hope to inspire all of us to catch the power in women's purses around the world.

It was just the first in a number of encounters during the next few days that once again reminded me why we talk about women, economics, financial power and money. Even in the auto parts industry, there is growing discussion of how important women consumers are to their bottom line.

On Monday May 8, I spoke to the Marketing to Women conference about women, money and power. The audience ranged from executives at companies who are struggling to make their brands and products relevant to women all the way through to companies who get it and are looking for new ideas. It was great to see that continuum of ideas and to see and hear the conversations going on among the group.

That evening, I spoke at the Enlighten Executive Salon, a small gathering that brought together about 30 executives from Chicago businesses such as McDonald's and Northern Trust. These small groups make it easy to get into deeper conversations. And for me it was a chance to reconnect with executives at McDonald's, who I'm happy to hear continue to forge ahead with their products designed by women but sold to everyone. The conversation around our table focused on how important it is to keep the pressure on a company to support products like McDonald's premium salads. There was also discussion about how important women and their views can be inside of companies that need that extra push to do something dramatic for women consumers.

I dashed home to Michigan on Tuesday afternoon to accept the Diamond Award from the Detroit Chapter of Women in Communications. Once again, I was overwhelmed with how important it is to keep talking about the issues around women and how far we have come in the past several decades. Despite those strides, I found over those busy few days that women still don't know their own strength nor do they use it to their own advantage. I'll be blogging more about that issue in the coming weeks as well as inviting several people from my travels to join me as guests. Then in mid-June I'm off to China so look for blogs from there as well.

The evidence for such a statement lies in straightforward economic principles. One of the best ways to increase GDP is to employ more people in a country. For centuries, women--half the population of most countries--were simply left out of that equation. Certainly, women have always worked, but very often for no pay. That meant their input and value to the economy was invisible and uncounted.

But as women have joined the ranks of paid workers in the past half century in particular, their value in the economy is finally being noticed. And that value is immense, according to The Economist. "Arguably, women are now the most powerful engine of global growth," the magazine states boldly.

For those of us that have watched as these economic trends form and then transform society, such statements don't come as a surprise. But they do come as a welcome change in a world that too often has a tough time giving women credit for being important to the economy--beyond what they consume.

We, by we I mean the media and marketers, may be to blame for this lack of serious attention when it comes to the issue of women's importance to the economy. We have focused heavily on how to get women to buy more, shop more, spend more. We also should be focusing on how women's inclusion in the world's workforce has been transformative to the global economy.

I'm urging everyone to find the article at http://www.economist.com (April 15-21, 2006 issue) and give it a good read. It will give you great soundbites that you need in that next meeting about why women are important to your company or your readers.

But even more compelling are the statistics and evidence The Economist offers that reveals women--both as producers and consumer--are driving the world's economy. The connection between the two--production and consumption--is a major strength in this article because it gives a much truer picture of women's importance to the global economy. We aren't just consumers; we are significant producers as well.

For more stats and soundbites, read on. Next Monday, May 8, I will be speaking at the Marketing to Women Conference in Chicago and introducing that audience to this revolution called "womenomics." I'll be doing a blog from the conference so feel free to join in the discussion.

Two readings have brought this ongoing battle to mind for me in the past few weeks. On Sunday, journalism professor Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chalt Barnett, a senior scientist, at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University took on the "boy crisis" that seems to be gripping the nation--or at least gripping the front pages of magazines and newspapers. Rivers and Barnett are the authors of "Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs," a great read if you need some debunking of the myths surrounding men and women.

As Rivers and Barnett point out in their Washington Post article, boys were also in "crisis" more than 100 years ago. The reason: "spending too much time in school with female teachers," a relationship that was "robbing them of their manhood," write Rivers and Barnett. Fast forward to 2006 and once again women are being blamed for today's "boy crisis." Whether it's "hostile" female teachers or the fact that boys aren't "wired" to learn in the way today's education system has been constructed. Such an education system is apparently rigged to promote girls--who are supposedly outpacing boys in this "girl-centered" education system.

Rivers and Barnett go deeper to look at the statistics only to find, no surprise, that there really isn't a "boy crisis." When girls and boys of the same race and economic class are compared, there is hardly any gap in education advancement. There is a crisis in education and advancement, but it has nothing to do with gender, write Rivers and Barnett. It has everything to do with being poor and not-white. "Race and class completely swamp gender," they write. Instead of focusing on boys in crisis, we be addressing how our education system fails blacks and poor children, especially from rural areas.

This effort to go deeper beneath the surface of "facts" brings me to my other recent reading: "The Self-Made Man" by Norah Vincent, the journalist who went "undercover" as a man in hopes of better understanding them.

While by no means the perfect book, it's a worthwhile read if just for the first chapter. Vincent joins a men's-only bowling league and comes to understand these men in a way that few women would have ever been willing or able to understand men. Women (I am broadly generalizing, I know) instead like too more often harp that men don't understand us.

But women don't seem to understand men either. Moreover, it feels as if women are far less interested in understanding men and are happier being smugly superior about how well women express emotions. In giving us insight and trying to understand men is where Vincent's experiment is most useful. While by no means scientific, Vincent does get far deeper with these men as a man than she would as a woman. The bowling-league chapter shows how these men take care of each other, how they express their feelings in ways that are as individual as the men themselves, and how women miss all this because we are too busy asking why men don't understand us.

If you've read the book, I'd love to hear your thoughts--pro or con. I'll be finishing it next week and would like to have a conversation about whether Vincent's book does anything to stop the battle of the sexes.

First, let me vent my frustration at Northwest Airlines' recent decision to charge $15 for exit rows and aisle seats. I fired off an email to Northwest about the program, dubbed CoachChoice, when the announcement arrived in my email box. I've pasted the response I received below in the "read more" entry. The response doesn't change my negative impression of this program, a practice I understand is becoming standard in the airline industry. Not only do I find paying more for a seat I've already bought egregious, I wonder how they check that the people booking exit rows can handle their duties. It used to be you had to book exit rows at check-in so the gate agents could visually assess whether you could handle opening and then tossing away a 40-pound door.

Once again, an airline has shown that it is willing to frustrate and anger passengers to make more money. But I wonder just how much money Northwest will make on this venture given that as my email responder notes that only 5 percent of domestic seats will be saved for the CoachChoice program. Northwest likely has spent a good sum on the marketing campaign and trademarking the name "CoachChoice." I wonder if they will make up that money on the funds they receive from passengers who are willing to pay extra. I'm not the only media person peeved. In the "Checklist" section of Newsweek's Tip Sheet for the week of April 3, 2006, the editors told readers to avoid Northwest. Their tip: "book early, or on another carrier." If Northwest wanted to charge more for something, why not offer me better food to buy on the flights. The $1 bag of trail mix is getting old and the box lunches leave much to be desired. I have to assume that there's a food brand out there looking for a great way to market their products to a captive audience.

While these frustrations of mine aren't confined to women, I do think it points to a trend that many in the travel industry haven't seen or, if they have, they don't understand all that well. Women are increasingly an economic force in the travel industry--and they are making their wants and needs heard. Just a decade ago, women business travelers were a tiny minority; today more than half of business travelers are women. Women also make up the majority of purchases of hotel rooms and airline tickets. With the advent of the online booking, many women have taken over the role of travel agent for their families. In travel, I've found at least for myself, that it's the small things that can really make a difference in whether I choose an airline or hotel more than once.

But I find only a few companies have really understood women travelers and their importance in the role of booking travel--even if they aren't the ones doing the travel. Hotel company Wyndham certainly made strides with its focus on women, although some of their efforts fell flat with me. The offering of a women's only floor raised my eyebrows. But I know that a group of women do want that feeling of security so I applaud those efforts. I do like their personalization efforts that give me the option of what kind of treats I want delivered to my room.

But as my book points out, women change quickly and I suspect that younger generations of women will be less interested in a women's only floor and far more taken by free wireless Internet service, docking devices for their iPods so they can listen to their own music and plasma screen televisions. I suspect these wants aren't that different from what men want in a room.

The hotel chain Kimpton seems to be getting this idea of the "small things count." Many hotel chains have focused on what now feels like "bed envy." It seems every chain has some version of Westin's heavenly bed. But Kimpton has made an effort not to be a copycat--even of its own existing hotels. They strive to keep their hotels different from each other. Some focus on health--offering wheat grass drinks at its Topaz Hotel--while its Hotel Helix gives out chocolate YooHoo and Twinkies (http://www.wsj.com "Kimpton Checks in Between Boutiques and Hotel Giants). But travelers know that while the goodies may be different in every hotel, the same level of service will be offered.

I could certainly go for Yoohoo and Twinkies on a long Northwest flight. But for now, I'll have to remember to book early or as Newsweek succinctly put it choose a different carrier.
Read more for the text of Northwest's answer to my query on CoachChoice. I'll be back on Friday.

Today Andrea Learned discusses her growing interest in "solohood." This trend goes by many names. Just a few decades ago, we still used the word "spinster" to define women who had actively chosen not to be married. Then it was the "single woman."

But "solohood" fits better because for one thing it's not gendered. It also comes with few roles and stereotypes--it's a blank slate upon which we can write new ways of living. Plus it allows everyone in from young women who are choosing to not marry--although they may be in committed long-term relationships--to widows and divorced women.

For marketers, "solohood" is a huge opportunity. But only if they get the idea that these women--and yes men--require a different attitude toward them. The world is no longer one big happy nuclear family--no matter how much some people try to take us back to a time that frankly most historians think never really existed. Today the concept of family is expanding--and that's a great thing.

So welcome Andrea, author of "Don't Think Pink." You can catch her blog at http://learned.typepad.com/.

FW: Not too long ago, single women were painted with the brush of "spinsterhood" if they hadn't married. Today, solo women are growing force in the economy and society. What is driving this shift from "singlehood" being a negative to solo being such a positive?

AL: Solo women are newly empowered. We have the choice to not marry or simply marry later. Divorce rates are higher (for a variety of reasons), and women are no longer rushing to remarry. And, rather than resigning themselves to traditional, isolated or inactive widowhood, women who lose their husbands in their more senior years are now more actively living the extra 7-8 years of life they tend to have over men.

Today, self-reliant single women can more easily climb a corporate ladder, commit to as much higher education as they desire, and basically live lives full of experiences for themselves. They are not waiting for "Mr. Right" in order to get on with life. They buy homes at almost twice the rate of single men, and they have no problem traveling alone. Though it is by no means fun, solo women have more of the support and tools to raise kids alone, as well.

Read the rest of interview. I know in the blogosphere this is a long blog--but Andrea has great things to say about the myths of single women and the brands that are beginning to understand "solohood."

So to begin. Just one day into Women's History Month and already there was "bad news" about women's progress on the job front in the pages of The New York Times. The headline read: "Stretched to the Limit, Women Stall March to Work." (www.nytimes.com) The text of the story outlined research showing that while women have made great progress in entering the workforce - 75 percent of women ages 25-54 work or are looking for work up from 40 percent in the 1950s according to the story - even greater progress on women going to work is stalling.