Marti Barletta has been studying women as consumers since 1999, when she started Trendsight Group, a consulting firm specializing in gender and marketing. She’s a leader in articulating the importance—no, supremacy—of women as customers. In her new book, PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds and Business of Boomer Big Spenders, Marti takes it a step farther. She argues that 50+ women will be America’s most important and valuable consumer group for the foreseeable future, and gets inside their heads so thoroughly that the book can serve as a roadmap for marketers. PrimeTime Women is one of the best business books on Boomers that I’ve read. It’s well-written, entertaining and has a sharp, extremely valuable point of view. Most impressive, the POV is backed up by solid research. I heard Marti speak last week at the Marketing to Women conference in Chicago, and followed up with a Q&A.

Why 50+ women? What makes them so much more interesting than men as a target for marketers?

PrimeTime women are at the peak of “The Big Three.” First, they are making the most money they will make in their lives. Second, this is not an “older” market that is ready to retire. I’m talking about women age 50 to 70. The conventional retirement age is 62 to 65, but Boomers have no intent to retire. Third, they are at the peak of net worth. They’ve been saving for a lifetime, they own their own homes and once the college bills are out of the way they’ll be at the peak of discretionary spending power. But equally stunning is where they are from a population point of view. In the ten years from 2006 to 2016, 96 percent of the growth in adult U.S population will be in the over-50 segment. That is simply because Boomers are coming over that 50+ threshold and swelling the over-50 numbers. And they are leaving a big hole below. Younger people and immigrants will be replacing them in the younger age segments, but only enough to keep those groups steady in size. There will be absolutely no growth in younger demographics—it’s a flat line.

Outside of a few categories like financial services and apparel, it’s really hard to understand why are marketers so slow to recognize the opportunity in 50+ consumers, particularly women.

I’m perplexed, too! Marketers don’t think women make decisions, or that older people have money. They see the numbers I’m talking about, but they don’t believe them. Women are the primary buyers for computers, cars, banking, financial services and other big-ticket categories. They are the primary buyers in the corporate and small business worlds, too—they constitute 53 percent of purchasing mangers and agents, 58 percent of wholesale and retail buyers. They own 48% of all the businesses in the U.S., and for the last decade, they’ve been starting up 70 percent of all the new businesses.

You describe the nearly obsessive chase of the “coveted” 18-to-34-year-old man by advertisers and media companies. They’re coveted because they’re so hard reach, but they’re also not very valuable as a target market. How dumb is that?

Yes, 18-34 men are becoming harder to reach—they’re moving to video games and out of many media channels. But so what? Why worry about it? I’ve been very amused by all these conferences popping up on marketing to men. Men don’t do the spending. It’s not rational—it’s lazy people who have not updated their thinking in 40 years. Marketing was invented in the 1960s, when Boomers were young. So, marketers looked out and saw this huge population and thought these were the people who were big spenders. The rational was, if you get them as customers when they’re young, they’d be yours for life. That may have been true in the 1950s and 1960s, but there weren’t that many things to buy back then. There was your house, car and maybe some life insurance. There weren’t investments, mutual funds, PDAs or computers or fancy home entertainment systems. Even in the consumer packaged goods world, there might have been three or four brands of detergent. If you grew up buying Tide, maybe you still prefer it. Now there is a plethora of choices in every category, and many are approaching saturation, or commodity status. So the idea that these things are differentiated enough that when someone picks a brand they are committed for life is just ludicrous.

You note in the book that fashion is one of the more appealing opportunities in the 50+ market. But one of the more notable marketing flops of late is Forth & Towne, the Gap’s apparel store targeting women in this segment. What happened there, and what’s the lesson for other marketers?

It’s important to distinguish between fashion and apparel. I’m talking about apparel. Some of it is fashionable and some is functional. But while the overall apparel market is tanking, the one part that is growing strongly is 50+ women. Forth and Towne didn’t do their homework. They targeted women “35+”…and that isn’t much different from 25+. The other thing about Forth & Towne—their clothes were boring. Very conventional, as opposed to Chico’s or Coldwater Creek.

You seem convinced that Boomers will continue working past traditional retirement age—because they say that’s what they want to do. But where will they all work? Certainly not in corporations that push them and their expensive salaries out the door. And they can’t all be entrepreneurs, can they?

I don’t think they all will work, but I think the strong majority of Boomers will continue to work for pay. The reason? They haven’t saved enough to retire. That is well established. Only 10% have saved anything close to what they will need, so work will be a financial necessity. But many want to keep working because they enjoy the social contact and want to keep their minds active. Will corporations push them out? Sure, there has been considerable age discrimination in the workplace, but I also see article after article by economists warning of a terrible crash coming in the U.S. economy because of a shortage of workers. If the demand is as strong as they say, then companies will change their attitudes quickly. And it will be win-win. Older workers will probably prefer to go part time and have more flexibility.

I found your data on 50+ women and their interest in “going green” especially interesting. They are far more interested than younger women in every aspect of environmental issues. What are the implications for marketers?

I’ve been surprised and pleased to see how fast the green marketing movement is getting traction. It’s becoming a major interest in the last few months for a lot of companies, and people that get with the program are going to catch the attention of prime time women. Boomers grew up more active than younger age groups. They have retained a lot of that attitude that “It’s our job to change the world.” All this me-generation crap notwithstanding, this generation did set out to change the world and in many ways did. Generation X did not grow up with that same cultural point of view.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Marketing, Media, Retailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.