Women are earning, spending, and influencing spending at a greater rate than ever before -- and they account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States, and over the next decade they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions, and purchase over 50 percent of traditional male products, including automobiles, home improvement products and consumer electronics.
But 91% of women say that advertisers don't understand them.
Recognizing the power and influence of women must be a top priority for marketers if they are going to tap into the market's full potential. Here are 30 surprising stats to help marketers get a handle on this misunderstood demographic.
Earning Power
1. The average American woman is expected to earn more than the average American male by 2028
2. Fifty-one percent of U.S. private wealth is controlled by women
3. Women account for over 50% of all stock ownership in the U.S.
4. Women control more than 60% of all personal wealth in the U.S.
Spending Power
1. Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases, including everything from autos to health care
2. Women make 80% of healthcare decisions and 68 percent of new car purchase decisions
3. Seventy-five percent of women identified themselves as the primary shoppers for their households
4. Women influenced $90 billion of consumer electronic purchases in 2007
5. Nearly 50% of women say they want more green choices, with 37% are more likely to pay attention to brands that are committed to environmental causes
Women and Cars
1. Women buy more than half of the new cars in the U.S., and influence up to 80% of all car purchases
2. Women request 65% of the service work done at dealerships
3. Women spend over $200 billion on new cars and mechanical servicing of vehicles each year
4. Forty-five percent of all light trucks and SUVs are purchased by women
Mom Power
1. Moms represent a $2.4 trillion market
2. Fifty-five percent of active (daily) social media moms said they made their purchase because of a recommendation from a personal review blog
3. 18.3 million Internet users who are moms read blogs at least once a month
4. In 2014, 63% (nearly 21 million) of all online moms will read blogs
5. Moms mention brands an average of 73 times per week compared with just 57 times per week among males
6. Seventy-seven percent of mom bloggers will only write about products or brands whose reputations they approve of, and another 14% will write about brands or products they boycott
7. Ninety percent of moms are online vs. just 76% of women in general
8. Sixty-four percent of moms ask other mothers for advice before they purchase a new product and 63% of all mothers surveyed consider other moms the most credible experts when they have questions
Women Online
1. As early as 2000, women were found to have surpassed men in Internet usage
2. Seventy-eight percent of women in the U.S. use the Internet for product information before making a purchase
3. Thirty-three percent research products and services online before buying offline
4. Women account for 58% of all total online spending
5. Twenty-two percent shop online at least once a day
6. Ninety-two percent pass along information about deals or finds to others
7. The average number of contacts in their e-mail or mobile lists is 171
8. Seventy-six percent want to be part of a special or select panel
9. Fifty-eight percent would toss a TV if they had to get rid of one digital device (only 11% would ditch their laptops)
This article has been published and could be found at www.mediapost.com
Many said that social media is like a teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When its finally done there is surprise is not better. Officially though, when manage in a right manner, social media is not like teen sex. It can be determined as an umbrella which defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos, and audio. It is also a fancy way to describe the zillions of conversations people are having online 24 hours 7 days a week.
Another important issue which businesses should concern is about brand awareness. Brand awareness does not only talk about the case of "Brand Mind", but it should also cope with the "Brand Heart" and "Brand Wallet". Having people recognizing, loving, and buying your brand would help businesses survive through the challenging competition in business. In the past, utilising endorsers, print or digital advertisement might work well in building awareness of certain product. However today, consumers are giving less trust to paid advertisement. In the other hand, consumers are very attracted to messages distributed and communicated by unpaid references such as the other customers which has an experience with a certain product. Because of that, utilising social media in this era where consumers could communicate and create factors like word-of-mouth, buzz, or going viral would be a good idea to create awareness and persuation of a certain product. In addition to that, looking at the behavior of todays generation which are mostly highly dependable toward the internet access, had made the practices of going to social media in businesses becomes a must.
Let’s talk about what can happen in a day in social media. In the next 24 hours, 700.000 more people will join facebook bringing it’s total users to 30million in the UK alone. Today they will tag, post, view, and share, more than one billion pieces of information. Having this big numbers of users, it is important for businesses to successfully reach the social media demographics of their target market. Utilising the facebook adds to engage to the right customers is one alternative ways to reach the right audience. In the next 24 hours, 90.000 iPhones and 160.000 android devices will be sold. Smartphones had put social in our hands. No wonder that 300.000 people will join Twitter today, sending more than 45.000 tweets per minute, or 64 million tweets per day. With it’s ability to go limitless in bringing information to the world, twitter could reach more people with a single tweet than Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or Financial Times which we got for free everyday. In twitter, when you follow and being followed by those “high followers twitteres”, you will be able to get a change to widely spread your messages. Youtube, as the 4th most visited site in the world and the 2nd largest search engine in the world has made them one of the huge things in the marketing world. 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute. That’s about 1.1 billion hours of video content added every 24 hours. So what does all this mean? When only 14% of people trust advertising and 90% trust recommendations via social media, it means if you’re not taking social media seriously, you will loose your opportunity to become BIG.
So now let’s talk about factors that are important in social media which bring to successful social media practices. Hill and Moran describes several important factors. Customization is important to give your business point of difference compared to the competitors which conducts social media marketing also. In the case of Facebook, Customization includes the ability to give customized attractive landing page in facebook, and also the ability to customized the usage of their page according to their objective of going into social media marketing. Interactivity is also important which includes the ability to stimulate conversation by their followers and viewers. In addition, businesses should also concern about the ability to create the social interaction in their social media marketing. The communicated message is not only expected to create interaction between customer to the business, but it should also able to go 360 degrees where customers and viewers are motivated to communicate the message widely though their networks. To support those important action, having your whole employees involvement and support is crucial. The social media marketing is not expected to only be the responsibility of the marketing department, but having every employees in every department participating will make the social media marketing becoming a part of the whole firm strategy. Last but not least, clear performance measurement is also an important factor. You cannot manage well things that you cannot measure. So make sure you have a clear goal to measure and keep a close eye on the metrics that you are reaching.
We have a case study which define a success story of social media marketing implementation. Decathlon Italy which is a retail company of sports utilities. In the begining, they have around 6000 likes in their facebook page. They feel that this number of likes does not give a satisfactory amount of viewers coverage. So they decided to go for a concultancy. After the concultacy period ends, and Decathlon starts applying the strategies suggested by the consulting firm, they are able to have an increase number of 25.000 likes. It continously to keep rising. Today, they have more than 84.000 of likes and having around 6.500 conversation in their page.
So what is the secret to their success?
First is their willingness to involve all the employees in the process. When the page is very crowded, it might be difficult if only one particular person engage in every conversations created. Because of that, when all of the employees are commiteed to the social media strategy, this will enhance their ability to better engage in the interactivity of the conversation. Second is their ability to utilise the SEO well to make it easily accessable to those target audience which are not familiar to the brand. Third is the way they maintain the balance of their emotional content and information. They understand that the main purpose of social media is not only to attract people to talk about the issue they stimulate, but also the ability to communicate information regarding their brands to their target audience. Fourth is the integration of information. Decathlon are able to use the information they generate from the social media to be utilised by every depatment of the firm to create better strategies. Last but not least, is their ability to create community in their social media marketing strategy. Community which had individuals having similar identity to the brand had helped Decathlon to reach more target audience.
This article has been written by HANDINI AUDITA and assessed by UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE, UNITED KINGDOM. This article are assessed for the subject of International Marketing Works by Dr.Beverly Wagner
As competition in business increases, offering only good product and services are not enough. Companies must be aware with the importance of involving customer experiences that would differentiate themselves from the competitors (Walls et al, 2011). There is a need to conduct continuous improvement in the way the company gives experience to the customers. For the case of Toyota Indonesia, it will be suggested for the company to conduct the step by step “ten stages road-map” of improving customer experience suggested by Johnston and Kong (2011).
Planning and Setting The Direction
The first stage to conduct is the instigation and objective setting. Clear state of motivation of improvement should be formulised due to the fact that motivation across organisation might vary (Johnson and Kong, 2011). The best suggestion to create a clear state motivation of improvement is to clarify the company vision, business model, strategies, and structure. By clarifying these factors, the company could generate a clear motivation of improvement that would be in line with what the company wanted to be. Then second stage emerge where the company could create the business case which could be utilise to better understand their current business condition and spot out factors that might need improvement for better customer satisfaction.
The third stage is to coordinate and oversee the changes. In conducting this stage, it is suggested that the company clarify their leadership style and the organizational culture. Due to the condition of Toyota Indonesia in which they tend to be more centralised in term of decision making (every branch will apply the same strategy and process), thus the best way for the company is to create small experienced team which are based in the Indonesian head quarter office when conducting this research project.
Research and Changing The Mindset
After conducting the planning and setting the direction step, the company will be ready to conduct the fourth stage which is undertaking customer research. The research should ensure to capture information from a well balance portion of customer spread. It also need to cover information from both their B2B customer (main customers of Toyota trucks and heavy machine) and B2C customer (end user customers) being aware that these different groups of customers would perform different behaviours and needs. Research could be conducted by doing customers survey and interviews. This research should be conducted in order to capture primary data from Toyota Indonesia customers which explains experiential factors that the company gives to the customer and how the customers appreciate these experiential factors.
The fifth stage includes defining the experience. Lemke et al (2011, p.857) stated that the seven key customer experience quality constructs for B2B are “extent of personal contact, flexibility, implicit understanding of customer needs, concern to elicit customers objectives, proactively checking that everything is OK, promise fulfilment, and knowledge”. For the B2C, Lemke et al (2011, p.858) stated that there are eight key customer experience quality constructs which are “helpfulness, value for time, customer recognition, promise fulfilment, interest in problem solving, personalization, competence, and accessibility of person/facility”. By conducting the research step, the company expect to change the mindset of the decision maker and staff when they see the perspective from the customer point of view. This will be able to enhance the ability to understand their customers better.
Development Through Involvement
When conducting research to understand the customer perspective of the customer experience, from the information gathered, the company could identify the major parts of the experience that are considered poor and good by the customer. The sixth stage is to prioritise areas for development which could be learned from the result of the research. When areas of needed development have been clarified, it is best for the company to ask those involving in process (customer) regarding how to improve the areas for development. Sets of point of view from the customers would generate insight and knowledge for the company regarding how the customer wanted the experience to be.
After receiving sets alternative of actions, the seven stages is to undertake action research. This stage is conducted by researching on the process and experiences from the customer point of view that would integrate together to achieve the motivation of improvement, company vision, business model, strategy, and structure. “Emotional mapping was particularly helpful here, also referred to behavioural mapping, which ask staff to map out the customer journey then add what they think the customer feels at each point of the process” (Johnson and Kong, 2011, p.15).
The eight stages are to develop and pilot the changes. In this stage, the company is expected to utilise information that has been generated from the researches to develop actions of improvement in giving customer experience. After the suggested action had been approved by the company decision maker, it would be best for the experienced team to lead the implementation of the suggested actions and communicate the plan throughout the organization.
Implementation and Embedding The Changes
The ninth stage is change the support system. When changes in company strategy and action apply, there might be condition where the company would require changes in the infrastructure and resources in order to support the improvement of customer experience actions. Thus, the company should put into consideration whether to modify the available infrastructure or changing the infrastructure completely. Training and development should also be a consideration in planning these actions.
Finally it comes to the last stage which is to assess the impact. This can be conducted by analysing the points of changes meaning the areas that the company has conducted several changes in operation. For example, analysing the changes in their cost structure (does the new practices creates greater cost efficiency), or the changes in employees productivity (does the new practices motivates employees to generate greater customer experience). Most importantly is the need of the company to conduct analysis on the impact of the new practices to generate greater customer experiences.
This article has been written by HANDINI AUDITA and assessed by UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE, UNITED KINGDOM. This article are assessed for the subject of Consumer Management 1 by Dr.Fred Lemke
Toyota Indonesia with their philosophy of “customer first”, had been aware of the importance of managing good customer relationship management. Customers had been located in the centre of the company DNA. Customer relationship management could be seen as “series of strategies and processes that create new and mutual value for individual customers, build preference for their organizations and improves business results over a lifetime of association with their customers” (Gordon, 2002, p.1).
Toyota Indonesia creates a great customer experience by integrating and utilising every strategic capability (technology, people, process, knowledge and insight) that they have. Technology has been concerned by utilising the web services, hotline services, and computerised database system. By utilising technology, Toyota Indonesia are able to integrate their customers at various touch points. Technology also enables Toyota Indonesia to understand the right time for a certain customer to buy, and understand what to offer to a certain customer. In this way, they are able to understand who the customers are, what they want, and provides a seamless multi-channel experience to help customers achieve their outcomes. Toyota Indonesia is also aware of the importance of their human resources. In order to make their strategy to allocate the same sales representative to the same customer works, Toyota Indonesia have to ensure that all the sales representative members are given the same amount of knowledge to serve their customers. Because of that, Toyota Indonesia had continuously conduct training and development that would enhance their employees skills, abilities, and attitude.
Involving their customers and suppliers to collaborate in Toyota Indonesia process of creating values and mutual satisfaction is also one best practice that could be seen from Toyota Indonesia. Suppliers are involved in the business process to ensure the quality and availability of products which would be delivered to end users. This openness of communication with the suppliers will enhance the trust of the suppliers and customers towards Toyota Indonesia. Customers are involved by applying the pull strategies where Toyota Indonesia could learn better regarding what the customers need.
The strategy of Toyota Indonesia to give great customer experience has several strengths. First, the way they utilise diverse range of technologies to interact with customers had given them a strong ability to reach diverse range of customers on different touch points at different life cycle. This would enable them to satisfy all of their customer segments by being aware that Toyota Indonesia had large range of different customer segments. Second, by involving the customers and suppliers in the business process, Toyota Indonesia could capture new opportunities. Collaborating information from customers and suppliers would enable Toyota Indonesia to capture hidden needs and opportunities that would support the new product concept development. Third, the action of combining a balance amount of companies capabilities to support the CRM would enable Toyota Indonesia to have a rich set of data mining collection that would be able to be utilised for future development of the business. Fourth, combining a balance amount of companies capabilities to support the CRM would also enable Toyota Indonesia to reduce infrastructure cost resulted from the shared investments of companies capabilities elements.
However, this strategy also comes with several weaknesses. First, expensive financial and time resources would be utilised in order to integrate the company strategic capabilities. Building good strategic capabilities that would work when being integrated does not come easy and cheap. Second, their strategy on having a customer being served with the same staff had given too much risk for the company. The strategy might be a good way to create emotional attachment between the customer and the company. However, this strategy gives negative impact on the company when that particular employee cannot perform what is expected (human error) or when that particular employee resigns from the company to move to be the competitors’ representative.
This article has been written by HANDINI AUDITA and assessed by UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE, UNITED KINGDOM. This article are assessed for the subject of Consumer Management 1 by Dr.Fred Lemke
“The loyalty ladder is a useful classification tool to monitor customer loyalty” (Mascarenhas, Kesavan, and Bernacchi, 2006, pp.397). Relating to the relationship between myself and Toyota Indonesia, being an advocate would best describe the stage of relationship I have with Toyota Indonesia. When customers is described as advocate in the loyalty ladder, it would be defined that the customer “actively recommends you to others, and does the marketing for you” (Payne et al., 1999, p.45). Thus, in this case, the company should emphasize on “developing and enhancing relationships” or apply actions to keep the customers (Payne et al., 1999, p.45).
Toyota Yaris that my father had purchased for me in 2006 was my first car. For me, I have not conduct any purchase of Toyota Cars by myself from Toyota Indonesia Dealers. However, we have to be aware that Toyota Indonesia products are not only cars. They also sell heavy vehicles (trucks, tractors, and others), car spare parts, automotive services, and also car modification service. Since 2006 until the end of 2011, I have been a loyal customer of Toyota Indonesia by repurchasing car spare parts from Toyota Indonesia official dealers. I also always conduct the periodic services in Toyota Indonesia. When things go wrong with the car, I will return to Toyota Indonesia to get the problem fixed. Because of Toyota Indonesia ability to guarantee quality and satisfaction had increase my confidence and trust to let Toyota Indonesia handle my car even though aware with the condition that going to other private dealers will cost slightly much cheaper compared to Toyota Indonesia.
Categorizing myself as a loyal customer, I am not only willing to conduct repeat purchasing in a premium price, but I am also willing to spread positive word of mouth about the company and willing to be involved in the company community (Toyota Indonesia Owners Club). One time, when a close friend of mine was confused to purchase Toyota cars or Honda cars, I am willing to introduce the sales representative of Toyota Indonesia which I have good relationship with, to give information to my friend regarding Toyota cars. In the other words, I am willing to introduce new customers to Toyota Indonesia without getting paid. When a customer is loyal, “they repeatedly purchase product or services, recommend company to others, and they stick with the business overtime” (Prus and Brandt, 1995, p.10).
This article has been written by HANDINI AUDITA and assessed by UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE, UNITED KINGDOM. This article are assessed for the subject of Consumer Management 1 by Dr.Fred Lemke
Customer satisfaction and service success are one of Toyota Indonesia major commitment in conducting their business. Customer interviews and survey has been continuously conducted in order to create better performance in the future that would lead to greater customer satisfaction in the future. Toyota Indonesia had been aware of the importance of maintaining their precious customers (www.toyota.co.id). As customer, there are several aspects that generate perception of Toyota Indonesia as company which conduct great relationship marketing.
Ability To Give Confidence
Toyota Indonesia had deliver confidence since the first time customer search information regarding the product they plan to purchase. Consumer confidence is created by making every consumer well informed regarding any information in which they concern. Toyota Indonesia focuses on satisfying the customers’ demand of information. This could be seen from the way Toyota Indonesia utilise every possible network in which customer would seek for information.
Toyota Indonesia are aware of the importance of online media. Because of that matter, Toyota Indonesia had given complete information regarding their companies, their products, and their contacts in their official websites. However, Toyota Indonesia are also aware of the importance of interacting with their customers and fully involving their customers in communicating information. From their official website, Toyota Indonesia creates media in which potential customers and current customers could input their questions and queries regarding to the product to consult with Toyota Indonesia staff. This media is created for those customers who prefer to conduct conversation using sentences without direct interaction or face to face interaction.
The 24 hours hotline service of Toyota Indonesia is also available to answer customers’ questions at any time and inform customers regarding the newest information available. The hotline service applied the companion system where every customer will be handled by the same staff which they first interact with until their problems, questions, and queries had been answered completely. Toyota Indonesia insures that every hotline staff members has the same level of expertise that would guarantee the ability to handle every type of situation.
In store service is also conducted by Toyota Indonesia in every dealer they have all over Indonesia. Customers are welcome to come to the store dealers in order to ask information regarding products and services that they willing to gather more information on. Continuous improvement, training and development programs are conducted continuously in order to improve the quality of the human resources which will maintain and increase the customer satisfaction.
The way Toyota Indonesia communicates with their customers from various touch points to keep their customers well informed had generate trust to the provider. Customers would be well informed about what to expect and receive. Enough information would give the customers lower anxiety when purchasing the product and services. Moreover, the way Toyota Indonesia maintain its customers trust on its quality through VDQI (Vehicle Delivery Quality Improvement) had been able to create greater confidence of the customer toward the issue in which the company would conduct correct performance. Also since 1982, the spare parts dealer in all over Indonesia has been managed with computerised system that are directly connected to the spare parts centre in Japan which would ensure the availability of any spare parts that customers need. “Collaboration with distribution channel intermediaries and suppliers to achieve the value each end-customer wants” is one of a best practice example of companies that pursue a good relationship marketing (Gordon, 2002, pp.3). Utilising “sophisticated computer and telecommunication technologies” which allow companies to “directly interact with end-customers” would create a meaningful “databases and direct marketing tools” that enable the company to “individualize their marketing efforts” which fits to their customers needs (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001, pp.6).
Ability To Build Social Relationship
When dealing with Toyota Indonesia, the company will ensure to retain positive long term relationship with their customers. This action is conducted with the basic philosophy of “customer first” in which Toyota Indonesia treat their customers as the centre point of their business. Sales representative will keep in touch with their customers for a long term period. When customer purchase cars from Toyota Indonesia, the relationship with the company does not end as soon as the car leaves the dealer. After some time period, the sales representatives will contact their customers to ask about the cars they purchase and listen to the customer experience and questions. When things go wrong after the car had been purchased, Toyota Indonesia will ensure solution for the issue.
Customers’ information is also managed in a computerised customer database that are connected throughout every Toyota dealers in Indonesia. By that, the company would be able to observe and connected to the after sales behaviour of the customer. The company are well informed if a particular customer forgot to conduct their car periodic service. When this condition occurs, the sales representative which got in touch with the customer will let the customer informed and remind the customer regarding to this matter. Every data collected from this customer database are treated by the company as knowledge and insight. This is the approach where “company uses to add value to customer data so that they acquire the knowledge and insight needed to deepen the relationships that matter” (Gordon, 2002, pp.2).
Toyota Indonesia also aware of the differences between buyers and users. They are aware that not every car that a buyer bought will be used by them. There are cases where a buyer bought the car for someone else. For example, my father bought a Toyota Yaris on 2006 which makes Toyota Indonesia treat my father as a buyer. However, the Toyota Yaris is given to me. I have been using the Toyota Yaris from 2006 to the end of 2011. In this case I am treated as a user by Toyota Indonesia. Being aware that the users are the individual who had direct experience with the car, Toyota Indonesia also keep a good relationship with the user. The company maintains a good relationship with the user through the Toyota Owners Club. By creating a community, Toyota Indonesia is able to create mutual recognition and friendship which are an important factor of relationship marketing (http://toyota-ownerclub.com/).
Ability To Give Special Treatment
Managing a combination of pull and push strategies in the management could be very challenging task (Schultz and Schultz, 2008). However, Toyota had conducted a smart way in combining these strategies in order to create customer satisfaction. Pull strategy is conducted by Toyota Indonesia when the first time customers come to the company to gather information regarding their future purchase. In this stage, the sales representative that communicates with the customer would gather information and insight from the customers. The information and insight are gathered when a customer requested for certain information. The requested information is the opportunity for Toyota Indonesia to better understand the customer. The information about the customer that the company gathered from this stage would guide the future touch points when the customers reach the next level of interaction (the purchase process).
Toyota Indonesia would utilise the information that they had already understand from the customer to create offerings and further information that would persuade the customer that they are making the right choice. This is the example of the smart way in which Toyota Indonesia conducts the push strategy. In this stage, Toyota Indonesia could adjust customised offer to the customer that would enhance the satisfaction of the customers. For example, Toyota Indonesia could offer a pre-approved credit offer to the customers that they judge to be trustable to fulfil requirement for credits. By combining the pull and push strategy, Toyota Indonesia is able to customized offerings that better meets each of the customers need and wants. In this way, customers are able to feel treated in a special way by the company that enhance the feeling of exclusivity and satisfaction.
This article has been written by HANDINI AUDITA and assessed by UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE, UNITED KINGDOM. This article are assessed for the subject of Consumer Management 1 by Dr.Fred Lemke
