In India, working women account for 15 per cent of the total urban female population of 150 million, yet little information is available about them as consumers

It was Oscar Wilde who famously said, "Women are meant to be loved, not understood." Alas, if only marketers could say that too. Their increasingly-hard-to-earn bacon comes from understanding consumers (of whom women are arguably the most important set) and devising newer and better products and services to cater to their real and imagined needs. In India, working women account for 15 per cent of the total urban female population of 150 million, yet little information is available about them as consumers. What are the needs, aspirations and spending habits of the working woman? Is the unmarried working woman very different from the married working woman? Is the working woman in a metro very different from the one in a smaller city?

These are some questions that few have bothered to answer in any great depth. Until now, that is. In collaboration with leading market research firm, ACNielsen ORG-MARG, BT brings to you the first-ever cross-country survey of working women, spanning 1,015 respondents in the age group of 26 to 45, covering the four metros of Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and the three towns of Kochi, Indore and Kanpur (See How We Did It on page 124).

What does the survey reveal? A virtual goldmine of insights. For instance, did you know that a whopping 85 per cent of working women haven't taken any consumer loan? Or that more than a third of them don't have any insurance policy of any sort, or that only 15 per cent of them have a credit card? Also, while Kanpur has the lowest penetration of credit cards among working women, it has the highest percentage of dual card ownership?

Only 15 per cent of working women have a credit card. Kanpur has the lowest penetration of credit cards, but has the highest percentage of dual card ownership.

Surprised? Well, brace up for several more in the pages that follow. But for starters, let's try to understand just who the working woman is, what she does with her income, how she saves, but more importantly, how she spends her disposable income.

She Works, So What?

A woman is a woman is a woman. Well, yes and no. Most of the market research that gets done in the country is predominantly based on interviews of women, but of the non-working variety simply because of availability. When the researcher comes knocking on the door, they are there to answer him. Yet, it's evident that a woman who works, is financially independent, is exposed to a greater number of products and services, is hard pressed for time, will have aspirations, needs and purchasing power significantly different from that of the one who doesn't work and, hence, has a lower exposure.

Indeed, even within the category of working women there are significant differences between married and unmarried, small-town and big town, and sec a and sec b (Also see The 5 Types of Working Women on page 117). For example, women in Kolkata and Kochi have a greater freedom in their choice of brands, spending, saving, bringing up kids, and planning career. Younger women tend to save more than older women, working women in Indore cook the least-just 10 per cent compared to a national average of 58 per cent-and fm listenership at 83 per cent is the highest in Indore and the lowest in Kanpur (17 per cent).

But talk to marketers and you'll be surprised how many of them think all women are one big amorphous set of consumers. Says Shiv Shivakumar, Executive Director, Philips India: "Being a working woman is not a differentiating factor (for us as a marketer of durables). (We) cannot generalise at this level, and it isn't easy to cater to this segment as a whole." The truth, however, may be slightly different. "The point is that marketers have not travelled through the psychographic corridors of the working woman, and have merely given it largely demographic dimensions," says Swapan Seth, Co-CEO, Equus Red Cell.

One argument that marketers proffer for not slicing and dicing women consumers is that the woman of the household is, in any case, the chief procurer of most household goods and working women are merely a sub-set of all homemakers. So why target them separately? Here's a good reason: As more and more women join the workforce, not just growing their purchasing power, but creating demand for new products and services, they are likely to be the trendsetters for the rest of women folk. Says Santosh Desai, President, McCann Erickson: "The idea of a working woman is very powerful. They define the mental space for all women, and in that sense, they are the archetypal consumer, with marketers tapping them as a source of change whilst locating the mass market elsewhere."

Working women are becoming a separate and lucrative market for products and services. That power stems not just from their role in the family, but also as a big contributor to family finances

She Works, It Matters

Marketers who turn a blind eye to such nuances will pay with their future. For, the BT-ACNielsen ORG-MARG survey clearly shows that working women are slowly becoming a separate and lucrative market for a large number of products and services, including apparel, grooming services, financial products, consumer goods, and even leisure and entertainment. That power stems not just from their role in the family, but also as a big contributor to family finances. For example, the survey reveals that working women generally contribute more than 56 per cent of their salaries to the household, keeping just about 10 per cent to spend on themselves, and squirrelling away the remaining 34 per cent. But if you thought that money went into a joint account, you couldn't be more wrong. An overwhelming 78 per cent have independent salary accounts.

With 95 per cent of the working women parking their money in a savings account and just 15 per cent of them having taken a loan of any kind, isn't there a huge cross-selling opportunity that banks are just sitting on? Why, even credit-card penetration is a low 15 per cent, and even among those who have the plastic, less than two out of 10 have two cards. Besides, a third don't have any insurance cover, and just a tenth have medical insurance. "For housing loan we are looking at the family, and we make sure we are not targeting any one group, say, women because we do not wish to antagonise the other person," says Suresh Menon, General Manager, HDFC. There could be another, more commercial reason for that. Even though the working woman contributes nearly two-thirds of her salary towards the household, she's not the chief wage earner. Nearly all of her spend goes into non-asset building expenditure of personal products, groceries, electricity bills and medicine. She contributes hardly anything towards loans for durables or a house.

What She Spends On

Even though a working woman spends just a tenth of her salary on herself, and that too chiefly on personal care products and gifts for other family members, a huge market for grooming is just about emerging. A good 58 per cent of all working women go to a beauty parlour regularly, and spend, on an average, Rs 230 per month. The working women in Mumbai, however, spend the highest: Rs 325 a month.

Little wonder that erstwhile product-centric personal care companies such as Hindustan Lever, Marico Industries, and CavinKare have moved in to tap the opportunities here. Lever runs Lakmé Saloons, Marico has set up Kaya Skin Clinics, and CavinKare has Limelite parlours in Chennai. "Working women in Chennai generally turn up mid-week during the evening hours for de-stressing packages. For regular beauty treatments they prefer the weekend," says C.K. Ranganathan, CMD, CavinKare, that runs Limelite in South India for working women. Harsh Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director of Marico, expects Kaya to be a Rs 40-crore business by the end of the next financial year. End of March next year, it should do Rs 20 crore.

Brand Happy, But Selectively

A majority, 92 per cent of working women, wear Indian ethnic dresses such as salwar kameez or sari to work, with western wear restricted to metros in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. While the big apparel players have been slow to offer her sartorial choices, it is the organised retailers such as Shoppers' Stop who have made a beginning by offering good quality and fit own-store labels in ethnic Indian wear.

A working woman spends just a tenth of her salary on herself, chiefly on personal care products and gifts for other family members, a huge market for grooming is just about emerging

Most apparel brands targeted at women tend to focus on the fashion aspect, whereas the truth is smart and comfortable clothing is what working women look for. "Working women, more than other women, are conscious of their bodies, so we ran a very successful campaign with Wrangler and Lee on 'Know your body type'," says Darshan Mehta, President, Arvind Brands. Some branded ethnic wear players, though, have entered the market. One example is W, a branded salwar kameez retailer, with presence in over a dozen cities including Delhi and Mumbai.

Another big area opening for marketers is the working woman's out-of-home and -office experience in entertainment, eating out or shopping. Almost two-thirds like shopping in malls compared to just a third for high street shopping. "In malls she has a protected environment because it's well-managed. She can also have a quick bite or watch a movie alone, and still feel secure," says Ajay Khanna, Executive Director (Retail), DLF Group. Given the average home-coming time of six o'clock in the evening, working women also find the malls' extended shopping hours a big boon.

Despite the pulls and pressures in her life, the working woman has not let go of her role as the nurturer of her family. How else does one explain the fact that a majority of them (nearly 58 per cent) prefer to cook the family meal themselves in spite of domestic help (available to nearly two-thirds)? And even as one in two working women goes eating out at least once a month, she is quite another creature when it comes to accepting ready-to-eat products in her kitchen. Here, the penetration is as low as 5 per cent. However, branded masalas are finding a foothold in her home, with a high 54 per cent penetration.

Calling The Shots

The restrictions that a working woman has are largely cultural and self-imposed. Across the country, they are fairly free to decide for themselves, right from the brand of personal products, entertaining friends at home to bringing up children, planning their career, even how to spend or save the money they earn. Little wonder, then, that retailers are designing their malls with her independence in decision-making in mind. The MGF Group is opening a new mall in Gurgaon, where it has allotted almost 30,000 square feet space to a sari store and 60,000 square feet to a hyper market, so that she gets household goods as well as office-wear at one place, helping her save time.

A working woman spends Rs 700 on commuting on an average, on public transport. Just about 10 per cent have access to personal transport, in terms of a car or a two-wheeler

Even though big durable purchase remains a joint decision of the family, almost a third of all working women are taking independent decisions here too. Their number is likely to grow and for marketers that's an important change. Durables penetration is still very low in many categories like automatic washing machine (17 per cent), microwave oven (13 per cent), car (20 per cent), and frost-free refrigerator (27 per cent).

But just because the working woman is becoming more vocal and decisive as a consumer, it doesn't mean she's becoming more like a man. As the survey points out, care and compassion remain her prized virtues. Her number one role model is her own mother. No. 2 is another woman: Mother Teresa. At the same time, if she's tough as nails at the workplace, it's because India's twenty-first century working woman has come of age. She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. Marketers had better pay attention.

-additional reporting by Priyanka Sangani, Venkatesha Babu, Nitya Varadarajan and Alokesh Vhattacharyya