Marketing to Women in the Tech Industry

Most marketing representatives know that women, as a demographic, are a powerful economic force. We're more likely to be the ones to be responsible for the household shopping and, having the financial reigns on ye old checkbook (debit card now) means that most household appliances are catered more for women than they are men. You're more likely to find a hot pink hairdryer than one that emulates a jet engine to cater to men even in this time of Bieberites. One industry, however, stands out from all the others in regards to their difficulties in figuring out precisely what women want and that is the tech industry.

The tech industry tends to be woefully in the dark about what it is that women want from them. In fact, what the industry seems think we want is usually superficial changes to their products or they ignore us entirely in their product design. If you've ever gone browsing for computer cases, the greater portion of cases are designed with men in mind. The coolest ones tend to look like they have been sliced off the body of a Ferrari and lighting tends to be available in red, blue or green. If you should happen to find a case that clearly says "woman", you can bet that case is most likely pink.

This pattern of product design for women is repeated throughout the tech industry when a company does actually try to cater to us. Instead of trying to develop a product that fully caters to a woman, what ends up happening is that they take the existing product and make it available in pink, baby blue, lavender, or maybe a pale aqua. Or maybe it's incredibly tacky phone covers so we can "bling" out our phones to make them more feminine though, to be honest, the owners of the rare blinged out phone that I've seen tend to be teenage girls and that probably wasn't the market that the companies were hoping to cater to.

Altec Lansing is the latest tech company to foray into attempting to cater to women with their new ear bud headphones. Available in lavender, light aqua, pink, and in faceted shapes, they are still falling into the pattern of thinking "change the color" when creating a product for a woman. To give them credit though, they did also resize their ear buds so they fit better in a woman's ear. A tech company, for once, actually successfully designed a product that may cater to what a woman needs. Now if only those ear buds came in other colors and I'd be game.

The biggest problem with designing a product to a specific demographic based on its appearance through color or "bling" even is that it's not really considering their demographic at all. Most of my female friends don't have their cells encased in a specialty cover. In fact, I don't think any of them have done such a thing to their phones. They've all left them black and there really is no mystery as to why. Women tend to be pretty fashion conscious. Sure we could buy ourselves a pair of aqua ear buds that would fit our ears better but what do we do when we're wearing red? Are we to clash our feminine colored ear buds of choice with whatever we happen to be wearing that day or does Altec Lansing expect us to buy all of the shades available so that we can fashionably coordinate our ear buds with our outfits? That's a pretty expensive thing to do.

The great irony to Altec Lansing's ear buds is that they were so close to being completely on the mark with what women may want. The company's intention was to create ear buds that emulate earrings and named their products in three different grades Bliss Platinum, Gold or Silver. If they had actually looked at what women wear in their ears, they would find that we're most likely to wear just those colors--platinum, gold or silver. If they had done such a thing, then I would be interested in buying their product. Picking up a pair of platinum ear buds means that I don't have to wrinkle my nose every time I pull out my hot pink ear buds and I'm wearing a color that they clash with. Give me platinum colored ear buds with a brushed surface or even a little glitter and I would have ear buds that would coordinate with everything that I wear.

This is why the tech industry consistently seems to miss the mark when it comes to catering a product to a woman. What women want is precisely what men want--a quality product that works and isn't going to break after a month's use. We'll take a black phone over a pink version any day because we do tend to care how we look. It's not hard to comprehend, with our multitude of fashion magazines, that women like to look coordinated and pulled together. We're not little girls who are blissfully unaware that some colors may not go well together like my daughter who typically throws together outfits in color combinations that would even make a clown cringe. Now, put that tech product in a metal tone and then maybe we'll talk.