What Women Want…To Drive!

By: Yasmine Syed

Advertising is all about breaking through the clutter to effectively target a specific audience. When it comes to car buying, messaging is usually gender neutral, or tends to skew in favor of a male audience. Men, on the whole, lease or buy SUVs, trucks and exotic cars and the formula for advertising these models is simple enough: highlight power, performance and curb appeal. So, how do you reach women? What kinds of cars are they buying and why?

According to a TrueCar.com study on car buying behavior, which evaluated over nine million purchases in 2011, female buyers gravitated towards imported, fuel-efficient vehicles and compact crossovers. Specifically, the top ten brand purchases by females in 2011 were MINI, Nissan, Kia, Honda, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Lexus, Suzuki, Subaru and Hyundai. In addition, the following models were the top ten female purchases: Volvo S40, Nissan Rogue, Volkswagen Eos, Volkswagen Beetle, Hyundai Tucson, Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Nissan Juke, Jeep Compass and Nissan Versa.

Volkswagen has concrete evidence of this gender-buying shift. This past year, the Beetle got a facelift in an effort to make it gutsier-looking and more guy appealing. What once was the quintessential “chick car” has taken a backseat to VW’s latest edition, the compact crossover Tiguan. Women purchase approximately sixty-two percent of all Tiguans. Why? It’s cute, practical and fuel-efficient.

According to traditional industry statistics, women buy a little more than half the number of cars sold in the U.S. and take part in eighty percent of the family car buying decisions. With more women in the workplace and an ever-increasing number of them becoming the family’s bigger breadwinner, the main draw for female car buyers is value and fuel efficiency. Could you grow your sales numbers with a female-targeted campaign? Yes, you can. And we at Potratz can help.