Why aren't prestige car manufacturers targeting the spending power of women?
Erin Baker and Jo Mossop at the ladies' day held at Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell
On a scruffy stretch of busy road running through the town of Newport Pagnell stands Aston Martin's gleaming flagship dealership, Aston Martin Works. With a pale stone entrance and huge plate glass windows revealing a warmly lit showroom, it beckons in businessmen passing on their way to Milton Keynes and rich residents from pretty commuter villages.
What it hasn't done, so far, is attract many women. Which is why, recently, the dealership held its first Ladies Day. With the promise of an Estée Lauder makeup lesson, Grayshott Spa manicure and browse through the latest Jaeger LeCoultre watch collection, potential female spenders were wooed with all the attention of a guilty husband who's forgotten Valentine's Day.
Which is not a bad metaphor for the entire luxury car industry these days. More fool the marketing men who seem to have overlooked the rapidly growing bank of single, professional women who can not only afford to splash six figures on a car of their choice, but don't have to worry about pleasing a husband or fitting in children.
It's going to take more than a spa treatment to woo the 750 British working women recently questioned by Marie Claire magazine who described work as "the most important thing in their lives", or the 40 per cent of the 1,000 women surveyed who earn more than their other halves, or indeed the 90 per cent in a relationship who said they were more ambitious than their male partners. The car industry has been pretty much ignoring these headstrong women these last few years.
And how about the recent research by the Center of Talent Innovation in New York, recently quoted in The Sunday Times, which found that 40 per cent of educated Generation X women (those born between 1965 and 1975) were childless and expected to remain that way? That socio-economic group is a recipe for a lot of hand-rubbing from supercar dealers, I would have thought. And yet, when I questioned Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes and Porsche this week, all four companies ran a mile from talking specifically about female customers, seemingly for fear of patronising a demographic they know frighteningly little about (although Mercedes confirmed that the majority of its SLK sports car customers were female, and Porsche noted that 13 per cent of its overall customer base were women).
Stephen Winkelmann, the president and CEO of Lamborghini, said: "We would not patronise our female customers by proposing special 'female only' events," yet he acknowledged that, "Female clients drive both our V12 models – the current V12 Aventador but also the forerunner Murciélago – and our V10 Gallardo is a particularly useable every day car." So why not cater specifically to female needs, which are undeniably different from men's, during the marketing process? It might be a generalisation, but it's broadly true, that women are less interested in the torque or 0-60mph figures of a powerful car, and more concerned with it's size and proportion, the trim options, the feel of the leather, the quality of the stereo. That's not patronising women, because those concerns are just as relevant, perhaps more so in fact, when driving a car every day, than its potential track performance. They are certainly concerns that dealers should be addressing because they form the options wishlist that pushes up the price of a basic model and earns a dealer lip-smacking commission.
Ferrari is little better than Lamborghini, despite its May issue this year being devoted to Ferrari women – those working for the company, female racing drivers and customers. A spokesman said: "Ferrari does not need to segment its customer base or product portfolio by gender, but can concentrate on producing exciting sports cars that offer a unique driving experience... to both men and women. It is true, however, that women have traditionally made up a relatively small percentage of Ferrari's customer base (typically about 5 per cent), but as Ferrari expands into new markets such as China and India, and as women around the world are becoming more independent and are competing more and more in the business world, the company has seen a corresponding increase in the number of women expressing an interest in buying a Ferrari." Quite, so where's its female-focused global advertising campaign?
We might laugh at Aston's manicure day, but the questions it asked its guests in a survey that afternoon should form a template for the industry: which car did you drive on ladies' day, how easy did you find the car to drive, would you like your next car to be manual or automatic and would you be more likely to buy a convertible or coupé Aston Martin?
The answers were suprising: more women wanted a manual gearbox, for a start, which indicates feeling at ease driving cars from one of the luxury industry's bigger, more testosterone-styled model ranges (a salesman mentioned that he thought the brand had probably damaged its female-friendly reputation through its association with the James Bond films).
Hats off, then, to Bentley, whose range consists of big, expensive, powerful two-plus-two sports cars and huge, even more powerful saloons, with a gargantuan SUV probably on the way. A spokesman explained the female-friendly approach: "Once the car is delivered to customers we offer a wide range of events, and accessories such as bespoke child-seats and jewelled pen torches which fit into handbags. We have a flourishing social scene with many of our dealerships running ladies' evenings. Dealerships run pop-up restaurants, charity auctions and fashion events with our brand partners. Cars are sold at these events but they are primarily social occasions and an opportunity to enjoy being part of the Bentley brand."
The company also designs its cars' grab points so that nails and jewellery are not damaged. The same approach is used by the "Quality" team to ensure that handcreams and lipsticks do not fade or discolour the leather hides, paint or wood veneer options. Scoff you might, but the result is clear, with women constituting a whopping 20 per cent of the brand's global customer base.
And if this doesn't sway the marketing teams in their approach, it shouldn't be forgotten that research by Volvo 10 years ago showed that, while it might be men doing the talking in dealerships and signing on the dotted line, the women in their lives were responsible for the purchasing decision in a staggering 80 per cent of cases.
Imagine how that figure looks a decade on in women's inexorable climb to the top. It's about time that car companies selling expensive, exclusive cars addressed their spending power.
Erin Baker and Jo Mossop at the ladies' day held at Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell
On a scruffy stretch of busy road running through the town of Newport Pagnell stands Aston Martin's gleaming flagship dealership, Aston Martin Works. With a pale stone entrance and huge plate glass windows revealing a warmly lit showroom, it beckons in businessmen passing on their way to Milton Keynes and rich residents from pretty commuter villages.
What it hasn't done, so far, is attract many women. Which is why, recently, the dealership held its first Ladies Day. With the promise of an Estée Lauder makeup lesson, Grayshott Spa manicure and browse through the latest Jaeger LeCoultre watch collection, potential female spenders were wooed with all the attention of a guilty husband who's forgotten Valentine's Day.
Which is not a bad metaphor for the entire luxury car industry these days. More fool the marketing men who seem to have overlooked the rapidly growing bank of single, professional women who can not only afford to splash six figures on a car of their choice, but don't have to worry about pleasing a husband or fitting in children.
It's going to take more than a spa treatment to woo the 750 British working women recently questioned by Marie Claire magazine who described work as "the most important thing in their lives", or the 40 per cent of the 1,000 women surveyed who earn more than their other halves, or indeed the 90 per cent in a relationship who said they were more ambitious than their male partners. The car industry has been pretty much ignoring these headstrong women these last few years.
And how about the recent research by the Center of Talent Innovation in New York, recently quoted in The Sunday Times, which found that 40 per cent of educated Generation X women (those born between 1965 and 1975) were childless and expected to remain that way? That socio-economic group is a recipe for a lot of hand-rubbing from supercar dealers, I would have thought. And yet, when I questioned Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes and Porsche this week, all four companies ran a mile from talking specifically about female customers, seemingly for fear of patronising a demographic they know frighteningly little about (although Mercedes confirmed that the majority of its SLK sports car customers were female, and Porsche noted that 13 per cent of its overall customer base were women).
Stephen Winkelmann, the president and CEO of Lamborghini, said: "We would not patronise our female customers by proposing special 'female only' events," yet he acknowledged that, "Female clients drive both our V12 models – the current V12 Aventador but also the forerunner Murciélago – and our V10 Gallardo is a particularly useable every day car." So why not cater specifically to female needs, which are undeniably different from men's, during the marketing process? It might be a generalisation, but it's broadly true, that women are less interested in the torque or 0-60mph figures of a powerful car, and more concerned with it's size and proportion, the trim options, the feel of the leather, the quality of the stereo. That's not patronising women, because those concerns are just as relevant, perhaps more so in fact, when driving a car every day, than its potential track performance. They are certainly concerns that dealers should be addressing because they form the options wishlist that pushes up the price of a basic model and earns a dealer lip-smacking commission.
Ferrari is little better than Lamborghini, despite its May issue this year being devoted to Ferrari women – those working for the company, female racing drivers and customers. A spokesman said: "Ferrari does not need to segment its customer base or product portfolio by gender, but can concentrate on producing exciting sports cars that offer a unique driving experience... to both men and women. It is true, however, that women have traditionally made up a relatively small percentage of Ferrari's customer base (typically about 5 per cent), but as Ferrari expands into new markets such as China and India, and as women around the world are becoming more independent and are competing more and more in the business world, the company has seen a corresponding increase in the number of women expressing an interest in buying a Ferrari." Quite, so where's its female-focused global advertising campaign?
We might laugh at Aston's manicure day, but the questions it asked its guests in a survey that afternoon should form a template for the industry: which car did you drive on ladies' day, how easy did you find the car to drive, would you like your next car to be manual or automatic and would you be more likely to buy a convertible or coupé Aston Martin?
The answers were suprising: more women wanted a manual gearbox, for a start, which indicates feeling at ease driving cars from one of the luxury industry's bigger, more testosterone-styled model ranges (a salesman mentioned that he thought the brand had probably damaged its female-friendly reputation through its association with the James Bond films).
Hats off, then, to Bentley, whose range consists of big, expensive, powerful two-plus-two sports cars and huge, even more powerful saloons, with a gargantuan SUV probably on the way. A spokesman explained the female-friendly approach: "Once the car is delivered to customers we offer a wide range of events, and accessories such as bespoke child-seats and jewelled pen torches which fit into handbags. We have a flourishing social scene with many of our dealerships running ladies' evenings. Dealerships run pop-up restaurants, charity auctions and fashion events with our brand partners. Cars are sold at these events but they are primarily social occasions and an opportunity to enjoy being part of the Bentley brand."
The company also designs its cars' grab points so that nails and jewellery are not damaged. The same approach is used by the "Quality" team to ensure that handcreams and lipsticks do not fade or discolour the leather hides, paint or wood veneer options. Scoff you might, but the result is clear, with women constituting a whopping 20 per cent of the brand's global customer base.
And if this doesn't sway the marketing teams in their approach, it shouldn't be forgotten that research by Volvo 10 years ago showed that, while it might be men doing the talking in dealerships and signing on the dotted line, the women in their lives were responsible for the purchasing decision in a staggering 80 per cent of cases.
Imagine how that figure looks a decade on in women's inexorable climb to the top. It's about time that car companies selling expensive, exclusive cars addressed their spending power.
Source - The Telegraph
