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)