BARLETTA, Martha 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: Graduated from Carleton College; Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—920 Pine St., Winnetka, IL 60093. Office—The TrendSight Group, 1015 Spruce St., Suite 102, Winnetka, IL 60093-2144. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Marketing strategist. Worked for firms including Foote, Cone, and Belding, Chicago, IL, and Frankly Female at Frankel; founder and president of TrendSight Group (marketing consulting firm), Winnetka, IL. Marketing/fundraising chair of National Women's History Museum, Washington, DC; chair of Women's Marketing Council of the Business Women's Network, Washington, DC. Guest lecturer at Northwestern University and Illinois Institute of Technology.

WRITINGS:

Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment, Dearborn Trade Publishing (Chicago, IL), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Martha Barletta developed her marketing strategies while serving the needs of clients that included Kraft, Kodak, and Allstate Insurance. She founded her own firm, The TrendSight Group, and wrote the book Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment. According to many reviewers, women make approximately eighty-five percent of marketing decisions, women entrepreneurs account for nearly three-fourths of new business startups, and the majority of purchasing managers are women. In her book, Barletta studies what women are looking for as they make purchasing decisions, what influences those decisions, and how the decisions differ from those made by men.

In reviewing the book for Ecommerce-Guide.com online, Jonathan Jackson wrote that "to be sure, women consumers are important to any business. Marketers ignore them at their peril. Archaic (and often insulting) stereotypes of the June Cleaver years have no place in a modern marketing plan. Whether or not Barletta's approach is the answer remains to be seen. Certainly, Marketing to Women keeps one focused squarely on the issue."

Barletta writes that many advertisements are written to appeal to men and actually "turn off" women. This is particularly apparent in automobile advertising. A US Banker contributor noted that the second section of the book uses "marketing models" that "illustrate what women value and what motivates them to make a buy or choose a brand. Among four aspects in a schematic are the ideas that women value people above all else in life, tend to synthesize high levels of detail that men find boring or extraneous and connect through affinity or empathy, rather than through competition."

Barletta also suggests that marketers conduct women-only focus groups because the sexes communicate differently, and she notes that surveys and quizzes directed at women will yield more information since women are more likely to participate. Barletta notes that ninety-one percent of women feel advertisers do not understand them, and a majority oppose how they are portrayed in advertising. An MMR contributor found that "in distilling the difference between men and women Barletta says women do not want better products and services than men. But women will go to greater lengths to get what they want."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bank Marketing, October, 2003, "Marketing to Women: The Banks' Most Important Customers" (interview), p. 8.

Booklist, February 1, 2003, Mary Whaley, review of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment, p. 961.

Entrepreneur, April, 2003, Mark Henricks, review of Marketing to Women, p. 24.

MMR, July 28, 2003, review of Marketing to Women, p. 9.

PR Week, February 3, 2003, review of Marketing to Women, p. 24.

US Banker, April, 2003, review of Marketing to Women, p. 20.

ONLINE

Ecommerce-Guide.com,http://ecommerce.internet.com/ (March 13, 2003), Jonathan Jackson, review of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment.

Martha Barletta Home Page,http://www.trendsight.com (June 18, 2004).*