I agree with Jasmine Montgomery's premise that marketers need to understand women shoppers better as the world of retail sales are changing dramatically. However I believe that this is true for the entire retail industry.
As Montgomery sites examples of positive marketing to women such as The Body Shop that "celebrate growing old." The Body Shops marketing focus is on the women that shop at the store them selves, encouraging them to be a more natural woman, just with a $13 vial of face scrub in an environmentally friendly recycled paper bag on the way out. Despite Montgomery using this as an example of good marketing to women Corinne Kerk, the journalist whom penned this piece seems to believe that the last thing that women need have done to them is have a mirror held up to them and to be shown who they are and just need to be sold to.
Montgomery, Alabama
Sun Herald
English: Entertainment Lifestyle MarketingThis is in complete conflict to The Body Shops mission statement. They have no mass marketing campaigns, just micro-marketed forest green stores, with each product places just where it would sell the best.
There are two quite different mindsets working within this article, both emphasising the need to understand women better while each taking a different tack and trying to achieve the same out come, that women are looking for a lifestyle. Montgomery advocating the need to define women more accurately and market to them more specifically while Kerk is repeatedly focusing on general stereotypes that are easily grouped with Montgomery's five general demographic styling such as women being gatherers.
The search for a branded lifestyle is the goal for any marketer whom is trying to achieve for a large company. Men and women have rapidly changing lives and need the convenience of having a brand to...