Working Women

Internet usage among women in the US has recently been more than that among men, and according to eMarketer. Women will continue to dominate the usage of the Internet as the number of women going online is expected to grow at a faster pace than men. According to research published by Nielsen/NetRatings in May 2006, 52% of Internet users are women. Women going online have experienced a growth of 19% since 2003 vs. the 12% growth witnessed in men going online and this trend is expected to continue.

Women use the Internet for a variety of activities ranging from email, chat, social networking to online shopping and searching for health and fitness information. Women going online have been attracting attention from the marketers as they are the biggest offline spenders and with the recent growing trend of women shopping online and using product comparison sites to research products, marketers and internet entrepreneurs are seeing this as a key opportunity.

Working women had long embraced the Internet as a medium to manage their fast-paced daily lives. They constitute roughly 73% of the women surfing the Internet. They use the Internet to maintain a balance between work and life. The Internet allows them to multi-task and thus balance their work, family and personal life.

Trends and Patterns

Working women being hard pressed for time, perform a lot of their shopping activities online. Product research, social networking, health and fitness, finding recipes for cooking, banking, playing games, downloading music, travel and entertainment are the top online activities of working women. Around 90% of them do product research online as they do not have the time to visit stores, which makes the Internet a crucial media for marketers to reach out to these prospective customers. Otherwise, there is a high probability that an absence on the Internet might eliminate the product out of their consideration basket.

These women are trying to perform as many transactions as possible online to save time. Most of them connect to the Net daily and feel out of sorts if they fail to spend time online (addiction?). Over 85% of them spend more time online than they actually plan to, which gives an idea of the role of the Internet in their lives. More than 60% of online working women feel that marketers must use the Internet to target them and confirms the fact that they pay much more attention to online advertisements than on any other media.

Though there are a host of websites like WomenWorking or WomensMedia or WorkingMother or AdvancingWomen, which are targeted at the working women, they have not been able to generate sufficient interest among the target audience. These websites have been witnessing a constant slide in their traffic rankings and their current rankings are nothing much to write home about. They have low volume/quality of content, lack good presentation, proper social networking facility and current information, which are the keys to driving traffic to a website. Workerette a blog website for working women has witnessed a rise of 200% in eyeballs in the past 3 months.

However, working women are flocking to websites, which are widely used by the general society and apart from Yahoo!, Google and MSN, some of their favorite websites are as follows:

Shopping on the Net

The demographic profile of online shoppers has evolved since e-commerce was first introduced. Online shopping was earlier the domain of knowledgeable, high-income, single-white males aged 20 – 30 years, but today online shopping is fast becoming the prerogative of women, as more than 68% of working women do shopping online. The favorite shopping destinations for these women are Amazon, eBay, Shopping.com and websites of the brick and mortar retailers. Working women visit these websites to buy books, look for good bargains on accessories, latest collection of women’s wear and home décor. They also make purchases related to their children and gifts for their spouse and friends.

Splurging on Gadgets

Who would have thought that women would beat their male compatriots in buying the latest gadgets and gizmos? But the latest data published by eMarketer shows that Generation X and Generation Y women are splurging on the latest mobile phones, hand held PDA’s, gaming consoles, digital cameras, MP3 players and high definition televisions. According to a study conducted by Vertis Communications young women are increasingly getting tech savvy and spending large amounts to purchase these gadgets.

The purchasing power of the Generation X and Generation Y females comes from the fact that they are working. These gadgets complement their active work and social lives. Marketers now need to rethink their advertisement strategy as most of the ads for consumer electronics are targeted at men but with working women all gaga about the latest gizmos, marketers need to broaden the scope of their advertisement as well as their selection of the media as these busy women spend more time online than on any other media.

The graph below shows the select consumer electronics that Generation Y females, parents and adults plan to purchase in the next year.

Social Networking and Online Dating

According to a research conducted by Pew Internet and American Life, over 61% of US working women use social networking and online dating sites. Working women love to network on the Net and MySpace, Orkut, and Meebo are their favorite destinations. They are affluent, have access to high speed Internet, are comfortable using these websites and are not worried about their online security. Social networking and online dating have become an integral part of many working womens’ lives. They are so hooked on to social networking that they are logged on even when they are at work.

Social networking websites offer these women much more than simple chatting or meeting people. They are lifestyle portals that help these women to know more about the latest trends in fashion, new products, get quality information on health and fitness, and ofcourse, entertainment. They also use these networking websites to look for job opportunities or to find information to boost their careers. In the US roughly 10 million women Internet users are single and looking for partners and young working women form a vast majority of them.

Online Entertainment

Working women often don’t have the time to visit movie theatres and websites like NetFlix have brought entertainment back into their lives. These women also like their iPods and are frequent users of Apple’s iTunes. They visit YouTube or Flickr to post their own videos or photographs and to watch their friends’.

Cooking on the Internet

Yahoo! started its foods division after it found out that a large cross section of the working women search for recipes and cooking related stuff on its search engine and this search is at its peak around 4 to 5 in the evening. Working women being short of time look up the Internet for recipes. FoodNetwork, AllRecipes and Epicurious are the most popular cooking websites. These cooking websites provide step-by-step cooking procedure, low calorie recipes, etc. and are a huge hit especially with the working moms.

Business Model

Advertisement, e-commerce and branding partnerships are the main source of revenue for these websites. The CPM rates for advertisement on the other websites targeted at the working women vary from $1 to $10. Advertisement rates vary from $10 per week to $400 per month depending on the size of the ad and placement.

VC & M&A activity

iVillage, a website targeted at women and frequented by working women was merged with NBC Universal in May 2006. Websites like WomenWorking or WomensMedia or Workerette or AdvancingWomen could be key acquisition targets as they are operating in the niche space but only if they are able to generate significant traffic in the coming months. It is a surprise that these sites have not been able to latch on to specific needs of their target audience that would justify their existence.

Conclusion

Working women are avid users of the Internet and they use the Internet to facilitate and maintain a balance between work, personal and social life. Though there are websites like WomenWorking or WorkingMother or WomensMedia, which are targeted at the working women none of them have traction. Instead cooking, dating, and comparison shopping sites have done better in attracting this audience.

Working women is a niche segment, having a high purchasing power, is hungry for information, quality services and avenues to spend their money, which makes them a good target for entrepreneurs and marketers. Quite likely, well-positioned offerings in the category could push CPM rates to much higher numbers (over $25, from its current sub $10 levels). It is upto the entrepreneurs to figure out what topics and services would draw this audience’s attention.

Comments

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