ick Marshall believed that the best way to advertise and sell products is to use babes-in-bikinis. That is, until a freak accident gave him the psychological version of X-ray vision. The fallout: He realised that all these years he didn�t know a thing about what women want.

That was in the movie (What Woman Want, to be precise), but there is a lesson in there: it�s a mistake - at home or in the marketplace - to rely on generalisations without trying to assess whether the shoe actually fits the woman standing in front of you. This is not to say we shouldn�t ask what women want - in fact, asking an individual woman what she wants is perhaps the best policy under the circumstances.... more