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According to Motortrend.com, the number of women buying SUVs has gone up by 177% since 2016. There was a time when any decision to do with cars was automatically left to the “man of the house” to decide. But now, when it comes to making decisions about cars, women are taking the reign and saying “I will decide when it’s time to sell my car or what car I should buy”.
What’s driving the trend? A desire for independence is
Women are at last realising that they are not second to men. They’re demonstrating this by making their own choices and sticking to them.
According to Holden Australia’s Marketing Director, Mark Harland, director of marketing and customer experience at the company, “women are making the decision on midsize SUVs which is the fastest growing segment in Australia”.
Harland told Mumbrella – a leading, Australian online advertising journal that they were marketing their new Equinox SUV with the idea that “women had nothing to prove.”
Of course, it’s a ‘take’ on the fact that they have everything to prove, given the condescension that men have treated them with for more than 2000 years!
Who’s driving change – the King of Saudi Arabia?
Quite possibly.
In Feb 2018, Hannah Elliott of Bloomberg reported in a piece titled “Luxury Automakers Are Finally Discovering the Power of Women Buyers” that changes to Sharia Law in Saudi Arabia are behind more and more women getting behind the wheel.
The Saudi King has made it legal for women to drive cars from this year onwards.
Women aren’t queueing the way brands are
They are tripping over themselves to get in front of women – in some cases, knocking men out of the way.
Aston Martin, Chief Executive, Andy Palmer is counting on women to improve dwindling sales. In 2018, Aston Martin sold less than 70,000 vehicles worldwide, a big fall from grace compared to its performance a decade ago.
The fall has encouraged Aston Martin to set up a Women’s Advisory Panel which will assist the somewhat out-of-date carmaker to clean up its act and portray women the way they wish to be in its ads – in control.
What women want in a car is what they want in a man: DEPTH
Previous marketing of luxury SUV brands has focused on colour and trims, these are on their way out. Women want performance and men and cars who’ll give it to them.
The times they-are-a-changing
And one doesn’t have to spin a record of Bob Dylan in order to understand this.
Women are on top, and in charge of more decisions than they ever have been before.
And while this is great news for automakers who have understood the change and have prepared for it, it is bad news for those automakers still stuck in a time and age when women were happy to take a backseat when it came to cars and which ones they opted for.
Women of today, know what they want, and they’re prepared to go after it and get it!