Marketing to Women
(2nd edition) by Marti Barletta

"Marketing to Women" isn't just a collection of polls and observations pulled together by someone looking to write a bestseller. There is hard science to back up many of Barletta's assertions about how men and women see the world differently, and why marketers should care.

The main reason why we should care, is $6,144,000,000,000. Yes, that 6 is in the TRILLIONS column. That's how much money American women spend in a year, according to a 2004 "Time" magazine report.

Barletta presents a comprehensive, if often strident, explanation of what business owners stand to lose if their advertising doesn't drop two persistent beliefs about society: that men do the spending, and that youth is all everyone cares about. She gives many examples of companies that have moved beyond those beliefs, and ways that other industries can do the same.

One of her standout case studies is Lowe's Home Improvement Stores. In the "men's world" of home improvement, women actually make most purchases (over 60%) and drive 80% of them. Lowe's noticed that, and their efforts to make their stores physically and psychologically appealing to women have paid off. As she explains, there is more to catching our fancy than producing a line of pink hand tools (that's condescending), but catch it you can (with better lighting and bigger paint departments).

The book does have a shortcoming, though, and it's a big one. Barletta has an axe to grind, and she wants to do it on the forehead of the nearest male. She isn't content to let her large collection of both social and scientific data make her case for marketing to women. Her snide remarks weaken her case on two fronts: by turning off the very people who stand to gain the most from her research, and by damaging her reputation as a leader in her field.

But if you can ignore the sniping-and I strongly suggest that you do-this book may be the single most profitable purchase you're going to make in a long time.