Identify a woman’s purse-onality and win

Women are and will continue to be, the best emerging market for producers of goods and services not just in Kenya but also globally. The evidence is in downtown Nairobi.

I am amazed by the way there are hundreds of shops in Nairobi’s CBD that sell clothes, shoes and beauty accessories targeting women.

And they all survive side by side in what I imagine is cut-throat competition.

But a chat with the proprietors of some of the shops revealed that they each had their own consistent customers.

As the recent national census established, Kenya’s female population is about 19 million, pointing to the available target market for consideration.

I wrote in this column recently that as women become more empowered in society they will increasingly become a driving power in the world economy.

Today they earn and own more than at any previous time in recorded history and their financial power is accelerating and giving them independent income and asset ownership. 

This increasing influence over spending even in individual households is what Marti Barletta, author of Marketing to Women, describes in her book as the Power of the Purse.

A lady’s purse is the nerve center of a woman’s life and bearer of her most important things.

And that’s where the opportunity exists for marketers to fulfill unmet needs.

An object of mystery and a well-guarded secret, a woman’s handbag is sacred and is to be entered at a man’s own peril.

Men frequently ask why women carry around so much stuff in their handbags.

Some say it’s for security- knowing their most treasured things are with them at all times.

Some believe it’s their innate ability to be superorganised - that they are prepared for any situation.

Some even say the content of a woman’s handbag reflects their personality. Others joke you can find anything in the bag apart from the kitchen sink.