Chinese women are becoming a new force in domestic consumption as they command half of the household budget, writes Newsweek, who tapped into the brains of Tom Doctoroff, Shaun Rein and Paul French, all speakers for the China Speakers Bureau.
Shaun Rein on the figures:
For Western companies, the rise of the female consumer in China is a welcome change. For years, multinationals ignored Chinese women because their contribution to household income was so small—a fact “that’s changed dramatically,” says Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group. In the 1950s women contributed just 20 percent of household income. That rose to about 40 percent in the 1990s and then reached 50 percent last year, according to Rein….
Rein’s firm recently found that women younger than 35 are the most optimistic segment in China, with a whopping 80 percent of the 3,500 women surveyed saying they’ll spend more in the second half of 2010 than they did in the first half. With trends like these, Chinese women may bring new meaning to the term “the power of the purse.”
But those women might have other ambitions than the women in the US or Europe today, says Paul French:
At the same time, advertisers are finding that Chinese women crave security, and that portraying women in advertising as fully independent may not work. Paul French, founder of Shanghai market research firm Access Asia, says women want job success, a husband, and 1.0 children with a villa in the suburbs, so advertisements are “similar to cupcake ads in America in 1953,” he says. “Let’s create the perfect family.”
And warns Tom Doctoroff:
“Chinese women are not indulgent consumers,” says Tom Doctoroff, greater China CEO at the advertising agency JWT.
More in Newsweek.
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Tom Doctoroff, Shaun Rein and Paul French all belong to the Chinese Speakers Bureau. Do you need one of them – or all together – at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.