Marketing Execs Don’t Know Single Women

April 30, 2007

This article is included in these additional categories:

Boomers & Older | Household Income | Women

Marketing execs tend to hold misconceptions about single women, assuming they are less educated, more adventuresome and wealthier than they actually are, according to Gigi Carroll, VP/concept director at Draft FCB Group, Chicago.

Marketers also tend to be wrong about the ethnic make-up of this market consisting of 51 million women age 18 and over – nearly half of all American women – Carroll is quoted by MediaPost as having said at last week’s Marketing To Women conference in Chicago.

Some finding from a Draft FCB survey of 500 US advertising and marketing professionals:

  • Marketers do have a good handle on the age distribution of single women. They say 31.9% are age18-24; actually, 29.7% are. And 22.9% are actually in the 45-54 age group, whereas marketers said they thought 21.3% were.
  • Marketers say a third of single women are white; actually, though, two-thirds (67.2%) are white. Also, only 13.1% are Asian/Hispanic/other, but marketers think nearly four of ten (38.8%) are.
  • One-third of single women are high school graduates – marketers got that one right, too. But 53% of single women have attended college/graduate school, whereas marketers estimate 48%.
  • Marketers say more than 15% of single women have an annual income of more than $75,000, whereas less than 4% do.

Some 42% of women in the US over 18 were unmarried in 2000, but in 2005 that proportion was more than 46%, according to Carroll. Nearly half of women 45 or older are unmarried.

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