6 ms·

I pity those in this thread saying that their fiancee wouldn't listen to reason about this. Karma be damned but women as a whole are swayed more by marketing t

by Zimahl 14y ago

I pity those in this thread saying that their fiancee wouldn't listen to reason about this. Karma be damned but women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are. They've been sold the princess wedding, the diamond ring, the brand-name clothing, etc. It's difficult to break them of this so sometimes the fight isn't worth it. I didn't pay for my wedding so that was my in-laws problem although it wasn't grandiose (but it could've been) and I was fairly poor when we got engaged so the two-month salary guideline was a joke. As for diamonds, my wife loves jewelery but has grown up and realized that everyone off the street can't tell the difference between CZ and a diamond. Case in point, I bought her a very nice ring from Nordstrom that looks like it's probably an $8k+ diamond ring and that everyone else thinks is a 'rock'. But it's just a big piece of CZ, surrounded by smaller pieces of CZ. Not one person has ever questioned whether it's a diamond or at least doesn't have the balls to. If asked my wife would be honest but she's never been asked (at least around me).

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jamesaguilar 14y ago
> Karma be damned but women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are To make a claim like this, I'd normally expect data, not a bunch of anecdotes. Men I know are highly swayed by marketing as well. They want expensive cars, tools, games, alcohol, and other toys. It is hard to reason about the degree to which each is influenced solely from the products that are marketed to them. It is quite a stretch for me to believe that women are fundamentally more susceptible to marketing of frivolous luxuries than men. My guess is that you just don't think the things you want a frivolous.
- ohsnapman 14y ago
  Totally agree. I see so many comments on HN along the lines of "ads don't work on me". Guess what? They do. You just don't know it. That's how good they've gotten.
- Zimahl 14y ago
  Think of how men are marketed to and you'll see the difference. It's not a name brand or a lifestyle, almost everything marketed to men has some sort of pragmatic function to it. Be it the big F-150 that can tow a ton, to the comfortable (yet fuel efficient!) 4-door sedan. Sport cars might be an exception for most men (although not for me). As much as you don't need it, a $2000 60" HDTV is still more functional than a purse that costs the same amount of money. And now to the marketing for women. Victoria's Secret: you want to look as good as this. Coach: you want a purse that looks like you can afford it. Disney: every girl is a princess. DeBeers: it shows you he loves you. I can go on, but there's no practicality in any of it. It's even worse when the target of the ads are women but the stuff they are selling are for men, since women do a lot of purchasing in relationships. You see this a lot in 'high-end' stuff like watches and sunglasses. It's not sexism if it's honest - just accept that men and women are wired differently otherwise you do a disservice to women.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    Again: would you like to provide anything other than anecdotes? These are worthless to me (and demonstrate your biases fairly obviously, see next paragraph). I'm amused at your implied claim that men aren't advertised to in fashion, since I can barely turn on the TV or radio without hearing an ad for Men's Wearhouse. Disney absolutely sells the prince metaphor to little boys too, and the fact that they grow into men who wants princesses is a big part of why that whole thing has stuck around so long. And if you think diamond advertisements aren't at least partially to men who don't know their wives and are at a loss for what will please them besides jewelry, then you simply aren't paying attention to the imagery in these ads or the types of shows they get placed on (e.g. the god damn Superbowl).
    - Zimahl 14y ago
      You are stretching on all of you examples. The Men's Warehouse commercials are as I described before, they talk about looking good for a function - work but life also. This is the pragmatic men's marketing. It's not the 'expensive so it must be good' branding that is on a lot of female products. When was the last Disney 'prince' movie? Aladdin? Lion King? Meanwhile, Disney has now deemed Mulan and Tinker Bell as a princesses, there is now an African-American princess (Princess and the Frog), they added another pretty, white princess (Rapunzel from Tangled), a Scottish princess (Brave) and Disney is adding a hispanic princess[1] (although light on the hispanic). Girls have been sold the knight in shining armor. Boy could care less about princesses they just want be an action hero. Diamond advertisements that talk about 'investment' are for men, but there aren't many of those. It's all about 'forever', 'love', etc, which are emotional pleas to women. And the Superbowl has A TON of women watching[2]. It's sexist to think otherwise. The NFL is openly courting women as a way to increase viewership[3]. [1] http://www.examiner.com/article/disney-s-princess-sofia-the-first-the-first-hispanic-disney-princess http://www.examiner.com/article/disney-s-princess-sofia-the-... [2] http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/marketing-to-women-women-watching-super-bowl-too/ http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/marketing-to-wom... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/football/nfl-hones-message-for-its-female-fans.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/football/nfl-hones-...
czr80 14y ago
Yeah, they should spend money on something sensible, like a Porsche.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  A Porsche for 25K, hook me up!
  - rdl 14y ago
    Pretty easy for an older one (993, even, or a low end 996 with issues)
- guest 14y ago
  Porsche makes WAY more sense than a diamond ring. So do hookers and blow!
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Either one is a status symbol, but at least you can take your kids to school in one of them.
guelo 14y ago
> women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are Either you provide a scientific cite for that claim or that is a straight up sexist statement. In case you haven't heard there's a lot of stupid irrational purchasing behavior by guys too.
- spydum 14y ago
  Yeah I think this would be a hard conclusion to jump to. There have been numerous papers on the benefits of market segmentation by gender to improve marketing effectiveness due to differences between genders.. But I don't know if any studies that can show with any confidence that one gender is more susceptible overall. It is always broken down by marketing approach (approach x effectiveness by gender). So, it is fair to call the spade a spade.
  - gwern 14y ago
    I'm not even sure how you would show this. Would you look at total spending by a gender? But that could reflect income-earning differences. Would you look at percentage spent on advertising by a industry targeting a particular gender? But advertising is an arms race which one must engage in as long as the marginal return is >0, and there are all sorts of things affecting this unrelated to gullibility. Would you look at marginal return on advertising dollar split by gender? But this ought to be ~0 for both genders regardless of effectiveness, per previous.
- will_brown 14y ago
  I thought it was an interesting statement so I looked into it a little. I personally was less curious if there was a difference in the way men and women react to a constant advertisement, but I wanted to know the % of marketing dollars spent marketing towards women vs men. I did not find those exact numbers, but stumbled onto :http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women There are a ton of crazy figures to digest on that page, again none addresses which sex is "swayed" more by a given advertisement. For example, "Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care"; "Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth"; and "Wealthy boomer women...make 95 percent of the purchase decisions for their households". Assuming it is true, women making 85% of consumer purchases is kind of mind blowing. This does not necessarily mean women are swayed more by marketing, but I think it is safe to say women as a whole are targeted by marketing campaigns more than men - at least after reading these numbers that is how I would market a consumer product.
surfaceTensi0n 14y ago
> women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are Citation needed. Plenty of men are swayed by marketing -- for instance, you'll note that the marketing ploy in TFA is directed at men. It's also worth noting that the commentary here is lopsided. There are comments from men saying they don't care about diamonds but their fiancee did, but you don't see a whole lot of the inverse (women saying "I don't care about diamonds") . One could easily assume that's because "women...are swayed more by marketing then men are". In reality, it's more likely due to HN's readership being predominantly male.

by Zimahl 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jamesaguilar 14y ago

> Karma be damned but women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are To make a claim like this, I'd normally expect data, not a bunch of anecdotes. Men I know are highly swayed by marketing as well. They want expensive cars, tools, games, alcohol, and other toys. It is hard to reason about the degree to which each is influenced solely from the products that are marketed to them. It is quite a stretch for me to believe that women are fundamentally more susceptible to marketing of frivolous luxuries than men. My guess is that you just don't think the things you want a frivolous.

ohsnapman 14y ago
Totally agree. I see so many comments on HN along the lines of "ads don't work on me". Guess what? They do. You just don't know it. That's how good they've gotten.
Zimahl 14y ago
Think of how men are marketed to and you'll see the difference. It's not a name brand or a lifestyle, almost everything marketed to men has some sort of pragmatic function to it. Be it the big F-150 that can tow a ton, to the comfortable (yet fuel efficient!) 4-door sedan. Sport cars might be an exception for most men (although not for me). As much as you don't need it, a $2000 60" HDTV is still more functional than a purse that costs the same amount of money. And now to the marketing for women. Victoria's Secret: you want to look as good as this. Coach: you want a purse that looks like you can afford it. Disney: every girl is a princess. DeBeers: it shows you he loves you. I can go on, but there's no practicality in any of it. It's even worse when the target of the ads are women but the stuff they are selling are for men, since women do a lot of purchasing in relationships. You see this a lot in 'high-end' stuff like watches and sunglasses. It's not sexism if it's honest - just accept that men and women are wired differently otherwise you do a disservice to women.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  Again: would you like to provide anything other than anecdotes? These are worthless to me (and demonstrate your biases fairly obviously, see next paragraph). I'm amused at your implied claim that men aren't advertised to in fashion, since I can barely turn on the TV or radio without hearing an ad for Men's Wearhouse. Disney absolutely sells the prince metaphor to little boys too, and the fact that they grow into men who wants princesses is a big part of why that whole thing has stuck around so long. And if you think diamond advertisements aren't at least partially to men who don't know their wives and are at a loss for what will please them besides jewelry, then you simply aren't paying attention to the imagery in these ads or the types of shows they get placed on (e.g. the god damn Superbowl).
  - Zimahl 14y ago
    You are stretching on all of you examples. The Men's Warehouse commercials are as I described before, they talk about looking good for a function - work but life also. This is the pragmatic men's marketing. It's not the 'expensive so it must be good' branding that is on a lot of female products. When was the last Disney 'prince' movie? Aladdin? Lion King? Meanwhile, Disney has now deemed Mulan and Tinker Bell as a princesses, there is now an African-American princess (Princess and the Frog), they added another pretty, white princess (Rapunzel from Tangled), a Scottish princess (Brave) and Disney is adding a hispanic princess[1] (although light on the hispanic). Girls have been sold the knight in shining armor. Boy could care less about princesses they just want be an action hero. Diamond advertisements that talk about 'investment' are for men, but there aren't many of those. It's all about 'forever', 'love', etc, which are emotional pleas to women. And the Superbowl has A TON of women watching[2]. It's sexist to think otherwise. The NFL is openly courting women as a way to increase viewership[3]. [1] http://www.examiner.com/article/disney-s-princess-sofia-the-first-the-first-hispanic-disney-princess http://www.examiner.com/article/disney-s-princess-sofia-the-... [2] http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/marketing-to-women-women-watching-super-bowl-too/ http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/marketing-to-wom... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/football/nfl-hones-message-for-its-female-fans.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/football/nfl-hones-...

czr80 14y ago

Yeah, they should spend money on something sensible, like a Porsche.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
A Porsche for 25K, hook me up!
- rdl 14y ago
  Pretty easy for an older one (993, even, or a low end 996 with issues)
guest 14y ago
Porsche makes WAY more sense than a diamond ring. So do hookers and blow!
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Either one is a status symbol, but at least you can take your kids to school in one of them.

guelo 14y ago

> women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are Either you provide a scientific cite for that claim or that is a straight up sexist statement. In case you haven't heard there's a lot of stupid irrational purchasing behavior by guys too.

spydum 14y ago
Yeah I think this would be a hard conclusion to jump to. There have been numerous papers on the benefits of market segmentation by gender to improve marketing effectiveness due to differences between genders.. But I don't know if any studies that can show with any confidence that one gender is more susceptible overall. It is always broken down by marketing approach (approach x effectiveness by gender). So, it is fair to call the spade a spade.
- gwern 14y ago
  I'm not even sure how you would show this. Would you look at total spending by a gender? But that could reflect income-earning differences. Would you look at percentage spent on advertising by a industry targeting a particular gender? But advertising is an arms race which one must engage in as long as the marginal return is >0, and there are all sorts of things affecting this unrelated to gullibility. Would you look at marginal return on advertising dollar split by gender? But this ought to be ~0 for both genders regardless of effectiveness, per previous.
will_brown 14y ago
I thought it was an interesting statement so I looked into it a little. I personally was less curious if there was a difference in the way men and women react to a constant advertisement, but I wanted to know the % of marketing dollars spent marketing towards women vs men. I did not find those exact numbers, but stumbled onto :http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women http://www.she-conomy.com/facts-on-women There are a ton of crazy figures to digest on that page, again none addresses which sex is "swayed" more by a given advertisement. For example, "Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care"; "Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth"; and "Wealthy boomer women...make 95 percent of the purchase decisions for their households". Assuming it is true, women making 85% of consumer purchases is kind of mind blowing. This does not necessarily mean women are swayed more by marketing, but I think it is safe to say women as a whole are targeted by marketing campaigns more than men - at least after reading these numbers that is how I would market a consumer product.

surfaceTensi0n 14y ago

> women as a whole are swayed more by marketing then men are Citation needed. Plenty of men are swayed by marketing -- for instance, you'll note that the marketing ploy in TFA is directed at men. It's also worth noting that the commentary here is lopsided. There are comments from men saying they don't care about diamonds but their fiancee did, but you don't see a whole lot of the inverse (women saying "I don't care about diamonds") . One could easily assume that's because "women...are swayed more by marketing then men are". In reality, it's more likely due to HN's readership being predominantly male.