Capturing the 'indecipherable' ladies market

Beyond stereotypical image of two women frolicking in their natural habitat

What is it that females look for in their consumer electronics? This is a puzzle that has baffled manufacturers for many years, and still no one has perfected the 'ladies' device. A brief look at the behaviours of your typical female and it's not difficult to see several traits that most of the species share: a love for fashion, shopping and social networking. And of course texting. Naturally, they are very social creatures.

Given this brief analysis of female interests, dedicated ladies electronics have generally been extremely stereotypical.  Most if not all dedicated ladies phones are jam packed with shopping applications, certain texting features, QWERTY keypads, crocodile skin aesthetics and often laden with that ghastly colour of hot pink. Perhaps throw in a free handbag in there too. None of these approaches have ever successfully completed the puzzle of consumer technology for females. I don't want to be stereotypical and say that all women are make-up obsessed, window shopping addicts, as thank god I have met many girls who are not like this. However, the general consensus is that there are many females that fit this description and a lot of consumer electronics vendors are trying to target just this. I'm going to explain why targeting females in such unimaginative ways will never work, and why targeting females at all is just an inefficient waste of time.

You might have noticed that the word indecipherable in the article title, is placed between apostrophes. This is because people assume that the ladies market is so confusing and unbreakable. We wonder if women want pink phones, or petite handbag sized netbooks. However in the end there is nothing to decipher at all. It's not as difficult as it is made out to be, there's no need to go into the deep complexities of female psychology. But rather, we just need to know one simple fact: women are just looking for a great experience. 

The fact that most women aren't as knowledgeable or interested in the tech field has forced manufacturers to blindly assume that women are to be targeted separately via alternative means. Instead of having normal products for normal people, there's suddenly a need to have modified phones for women. It's like they're not normal humans! However, piecing apart the overall market and providing tailored products for individual segments not only dilutes the value and unity of products in the lineup, but is essentially more costly. Piecing apart and spreading the target market also means spreading promotional expenditure and support expenditure. It's an inefficient way to do business. I'm not necessarily a supporter of small one product line-ups, since one product is often not enough to be able to encapsulate the entirety of the target market. However the ratio of products to consumers should always remain as small as possible. Apple has done well in this respect, though they represent an extreme in this philosophy. The iPhone is one product for all, it suits females, it suits males, it suits students and it suits business professionals.

I know there are many people and manufacturers that would aggressively counter this philosophy, Samsung is probably the most prominent of such offenders. In my opinion Samsung's smartphone line-up is excessive. Excessive to the power of 4. Daily, there is a new review of a Samsung handset: Infuse 4G, Galaxy S II, Droid Charge and plenty more. To be brutally honest, only one or two of these have a legitimate reason for existence. The Galaxy S II is a great phone, and most of the others are just cheap copies of the same device. Evidently, Samsung is trying to break the smartphone market through pure scale. Not much effort has gone into branding or exclusivity, however the 'shove in your face' factor forms the core of Samsung's smartphone effort. They want that obnoxious Samsung logo to be so ubiquitous that when picking a smartphone, the odds are that you'll end up with a Samsung. I can't say that this plan isn't effective, because I would be lying and the ubiquity of Samsung's smartphone effort is from what I've heard proving to be effective. And Samsung's strong hardware calibre has definitely earned the respect of technology enthusiasts. However speaking as a consumer and analyser of such technologies, this strategy offers little in terms of gaining brand value and consumer respect. Only time will tell Samsung's prospects.

Back on topic (consumer electronics for females), another factor that must be considered is a product's general ease of use and tech appeal. And by tech appeal, I'm referring to a lesser focus on tech appeal. A recent article that I wrote talked much about most vendors focus on hardware superiority in the tablet space, instead of aiming to excel in user experience. If technology nerds are the target market, this strategy is gold, however for everyone else and particularly ladies this strategy is far from effective. In this regard, I could say I'm much like a female, I couldn't care less about that 'ghz' and 'dual-core' junk. If it works well and smoothly then it works for me. This is why expert studies have shown that females have a strong preference for iOS over the geeky Android. iOS's omnipresence and 'I don't need a manual' interface has ensured that a lot of consumers are aware of iOS's great user experience. Android's geeky name, general geek appeal, and tailored user experience across difference devices has added confusion and complexity into Android purchases. For example, just because the Galaxy S II is a brilliant phone, I can't be guaranteed that Xperia Arc which runs on Android too will likewise be a great phone. On the flip side, I can be certain that the white iPhone 4 will be just as good as the black iPhone 4, and iPad 2 will definitely be an improvement over iPad 1. 

All up, I have shown two effective to captivate the minds of females. Being stereotyped as pink-loving window shoppers is not one of them. In actual fact, I believe that females dislike being patronised in such a way, the need to have devices specially tailored for them is somewhat degrading and evokes the feeling of deficiency. The most efficient way to capture females is to pull them into the company's overall target market, not aim for them individually by taking them out of the target market. Once again, females are just like males, looking for a great user experience, however, minus the hardware complexities.

What do you think about selling consumer electronics to women? Is it easier or harder than it looks?