hat do women want? Increasingly, advertisers and marketers in India have tweaked that question a bit to find out how to sell a product that is not traditionally oriented towards women. There are signs that marketers are starting to look at women seriously. Pink handsets, colourful scooters, lighter, sleeker laptops even luggage and insurance policies. But is that enough?

In her book Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the Largest Market Segment, Martha Barletta says, "Marketers in different industries ranging from automotive to financial services, luxury travel to electronics, are discovering that women not only hold the key to household purchases but are also driving big-ticket expenditures for themselves and their families. In essence, women are multiple markets - they buy for themselves, they buy for their families and in increasing numbers and they buy for their businesses. Forward-thinking companies are finding ways to capitalise on all three - by developing marketing plans that address women's multifaceted lifestyles and by evaluating and retraining existing sales and customer service forces to better serve women's needs and interests."... more