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Catching the Eye of Single Women (Marketing-wise)

Solo women are in the news. As noted in a New York Times article (reg. required) today:

“In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.


Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of
all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately
shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and
employers distribute benefits.”

In “Catching the Eye of Single Women,” (from the January 2007 issue of FUEL) I take a look at the marketing implications of these new stats. Here’s a snippet:

Although single women are as unique in their backgrounds, influences and buying habits as any other consumer group, there is one thing they would all like: visibility in the marketplace. Like mothers and baby boomers, single women desire to be recognized and appreciated for the economic influence they yield.

But unless you talk to them and explore their lifestyle, you’ll never really understand that being without a mate is not the overarching issue. It’s about brands letting go of dated assumptions and stereotypes. Just as ad campaigns now reflect moms as whole beings with many things to do in a day besides making their husband’s shirts white or baking cookies, brands must reflect the ways in which single women choose to live their lives, and how their lifestyle influences everything from parenting and housing to work style and politics.

As one 59-year old woman puts it in the aforementioned NYT article (“51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse”) written by Sam Roberts there can be a pleasant surprise at newfound freedoms:

“The benefits were completely unforeseen for me,” Ms. Fidler said, “the
free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I
have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of
work, travel and cultural events.”

To learn more, check out:

- my past blog posts on the topic

- Single-Minded: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After by Bella DePaolo, Ph.D.

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Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 in Consumer Behavior and Research, Filtering.Editing.Curating, Humanizing.Customer Experience, Single women

  • Val
    The fact that the new stat is reflective of a new lifestyle is really key. This guy makes sort of the same point, but without the business implications:

    http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/7366900
  • John M.
    Okay, that NYT article was a complete fabrication. US Census data says that 56% of adult women ARE married. The author concocted that minority number by including teenage girls living at home, widows, and women whose husbands are in jail or in the military. Lies, lies lies.
  • For years, I have been studying singles and their place in society. It really is a passion for me. And it has been a joy to discover people such as Andrea who totally “get it” about single women. We aren’t all the same.

    The New York Times story documenting the new American demographic – that 51% of women do not live with a spouse – triggered a slew of stories on the evening news. Just about all of them included a clip from “Sex and the City.” Now SATC is a huge step up from the stereotype of the aging spinster living with a pack of cats who eat her after she dies; still, Manolo Blahniks cannot be the sole symbol of today’s single woman.

    Here’s another stereotype that has great staying power: that people who are single “don’t have anyone.” This is the belief that people who are single are alone, and that as the number of single Americans increases, so will the sense of isolation in the nation. Wrong! Single people are in some significant ways even more connected to the important people in their lives than are people who are married, as Kay Trimberger and I noted in an op-ed published recently in the San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/01/14/INGJINGKTE1.DTL.

    Single women are especially unlikely to invest all of their relationship stock into just one person, then hope that person does not turn out to be Enron.

    --Bella DePaulo, author of SINGLED OUT: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312340818/sr=1-1/qid=1146449667/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7432694-6177638?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s;=books
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