DDi - September 2009 - (Page 56)

56 | Shopping with Paco The female factor: The worship of goddesses pproximately 70 percent of all adult American females work outside the home. Women control not just a percentage of active income in the world—e.g., money they take home from their own jobs— but a large percentage of passive income, meaning family money, or money they’ve inherited. Women dominate higher education. Most college and university campuses across the United States and Canada have women making up 60 percent or more of their student bodies. Today, record numbers of females are studying engineering, physics, computer science, biology and clinical psychology. The top tiers of business—as well as of medicine, law and science—are increasingly female. This trend began in the 1970s, as women began to overrun educational programs that trained them to become lawyers, physicians and architects—just a handful of professions that were once typically male. With the exception of the pick-up truck, females influence almost every successful car that’s come out of Detroit—whether it’s the family mini-van or the half-tank/half-observation post, secure colossus known as the SUV (which was never intended to be a macho vehicle). Women run households and companies, are attending business schools in record numbers, and make up an increasing percentage of today’s global business travelers. Females also make up a huge majority of all book-buyers in the United States. They are the acquisitioners of food on behalf of their entire families, and are behind the rise of farmers’ markets and the organic food movement. Women choreograph the social lives of their families, and have a decisive say whether or not the family will spend summer vacation camping in Big Bend, sunbathing on Nantucket or staying put. Women continue to create their own films and TV shows, as well as their own brands of humor, visual art and music. Sure, some of these examples are more conspicuous than others. Some are downright stealthy—the way the organic food movement has taken off, for example, or the way that, despite current pay inequities across the entertainment industry, a wicked-witted female writer and comedian named Tina Fey completely skewed our last presidential election. A It will never be absolutely equal between the sexes. But it’s adding up. And it’s only going to get more noticeable. Enough so, that if you’re a man running a business, and if the power and influence females wield hasn’t completely registered on your radar screen, well, then, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. If your store, restaurant, bank, hotel lobby, mall or other public space or amenity doesn’t acknowledge the female factor, if it doesn’t invite women in and make them feel at home, at ease, safe, hygienic, respected and in control, if it doesn’t take into account what women want and expect (which is a whole lot different from what men want and expect); well, then, it’s bad business. You also risk forever losing a powerful majority of consumers who are more than happy—gleeful, even!—to tell all their friends and acquaintances about your dirty dressing rooms, sub-par lighting, creepy hotel lobby, brusque customer service, dingy mirrors (or no mirrors at all) and an overall vibe of being treated like a second-class citizen. In my experience, women are pretty good at spreading the word. —Paco Underhill is the founder of Envirosell and author of the books “Why We Buy” and “Call of the Mall.” Considered to be the retail industry’s “first shopping anthropologist,” he shares some of his insights with DDI in a bimonthly column. Editor’s note: Look for more of Paco Underhill’s goddess worship in his new book, due to be released by Simon & Schuster in June 2010. | September 2009 www.ddimagazine.com http://www.ddimagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DDi - September 2009

Display & Design Ideas - September 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Newsworthy
Greentailing
Editor’s Choice
Portfolio Awards 2009
Retail Design Luminaries
Retail Design Influencers
Design Firms of the Year
Best Visual Merchandising Programs
Retailer of the Year
Best-Designed Stores of the Year
Best-Designed Hospitality
Retail Standouts
Calendar
Advertisers
Classifieds
Shopping with Paco

DDi - September 2009