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Do you think Digital Divas are a feasible customer segment for Thai market? If you have to market a product to them, what approach will you adopt?

SHECONOMY



At present, women increases both in purchasing power and sophistication in their behaviors as well as tastes and preferences. Most marketers still misunderstand about women clientele by thinking that just turning the colour into pink or orange with flowery decoration would lead to success in targeting women cilentele.

Women are dominant in digital communication channel as withnessed by higher adoption in social media and time spending online as compared to their male counterpart. More than 50% of female living in the cosmopolitan areas use more smart phone than men. It is, therefore, wiser for marketers to sub-segment of female segment into various sub-segments according to their needs and preferences.


Ladies are more and more single in the society and they pay much more attention than their predecessor cohorts to utility of products and services in the market. However, design or aesthetic part of the products and services are not less important than utility. Celebrities chosen to present the products must have some relation to their actual lives not just someone they aspire to be but living in the other world they do not take part.

Female market grows in both size and value. Media are one of the very first sectors able to capture this trend and offer women magazines of different specific interests and lifestyles. Revenue streams mostly come from advertisement from apparel and cosmetic industries where women are still market dominant.

Marketers should hange their mindsets about "single mom" segment of having inferior purchasing power too. Modern and professional single moms who are single by choice tend to devote much resources to kids' activities while single women with no kids spend tremendous amount of money pampering themselves more on beautifying and health related products and services.

The rise of female markets derive from more femake in higher education/ working forces/ and the rise of dual pocket families where both husbands and wives need to work outside home to support the household spending. Now, there are various types of products and services including financial products and investment units targeting working women.

Gender equality is of momre and more concerns of the societies forcing employers to provide a better career path to female employees. Now, there are more and more female employees and executives even in male dominant cultures like Japan and Korea.

Considering the use of social network, 72% of facebook users are female and these users. Females also adopt more online shopping and their behaviors and preferences shape online economies. Marketers targeting female must understand their actual sought benefits from each transaction and design their offering (not just products and total brand experience) accordingly even in product categories that are previously thought to be for male customers like Liquor and Automobil or electronic devices. Some brands such as Range Rover, and Blackberry engaged female celebrities to co-design the product to make sure that their products appeal and inspire their targeted female customers. Fitness First in Europe provide female only zones or some might establish female only club. In the case of Thailand, California Fitness Clubs used to launch a female clubs as well but failed due to the readiness of Thai female markets back then and their internal managerial problems- as you might have heard from the news. Sports equipment brands launch female product lines targeting modern lifestyle of women who concern with health and beauty. This is seen by a large section of female specific gyms and warmups that are desgined to suit the body and utility sought by women. Some smart brands use taglines that redefine feminine aspired feminity " sweat is the best accessory", " I run to be stylish". Therefore core marketing message must focus on female content or utility sought by female customers.

There are some tips of brands wanting to target women clientele.
1. Tailor-her made
The product design must allow female customers to choose some of the product features that she control or express her identity. Central giftcard now allow customers to insert thier photos on the vard.
2. Splunge on Quality
Something that is rare and scarce arouse the need of female customers through the sense of" Special ness" or "exclusiveness"
3. Cater to her time
For female customers with high purchasing power, convenience and self determinated time for shopping, and terms of shopping must cater to her working lives that are now more and more demanding. This might probably explain why online shopping is so popular among female customers.
4. Indulge her IQ
The marketing message must be logical and realistic that make them feel smart or never make fun of "femininity".

Women adopt more and more social media than do men and are more active too. The point for marketers is how to capitalize on their behavior- using mobile devices, and social networks, online or mobile transaction marketing.

From survey, women are on average 3.5 times more verbally expressive than men with higher engagement in career and family lives. They use social media to substitute their social activities through smart phones. A new female segment is now of interest of modern marketers are " Digital Divas" are women who are active customers for online markets including information and transaction. These digigal divas tend to be of generation Y followed by Generation X and late boomers. 22% of them engage on online shopping at least once a day. Most of them are mothers . Mothers and parenting web-blogs are very powerful source of information through the idea exchange of members about goods and services not only for kids but for themselves too. It can be seen therefore that women are more influenced by reference group and tend to share information based on what they have learned or their actual experiences with the products or services. Retweeting rate among female customers are much higher than those of male customers .

For information sources, females tend to rely on the following information sources when it comes to purchase decisions.
1. Friends and family
2. Experts or those with direct experiences with products/ and services
3. Teachers and academics
4. Religion priests
5. Mainstream media

Digital divas tend to shop their "liked" brands from social networks (55%) especially when it comes to sales promotion tool online. From the survey, the first daily activities of these digital divas is to interact with their smart phones or computers.


Sources: Marketing Plus Magazine, Volume 44