Its a question I’ve pondered for some time (not only about Sony but the various other global CE manufacturers) and I’m inclined to believe that out of all of the technology leaders with the exception of Apple, (a brand many women adore) that Sony has the best chance of success when they put their minds to it.
 
There are two reasons why I say this although I have to admit to also feeling disappointed that their origins don’t come from Australia.
 
I came across the first instance of Sony’s ability to be ‘gender intelligent’ when I strolled past the Sony Style store in Beijing’s affluent Park Plaza shopping mall, yesterday morning.
 
What stopped me in my tracks was first, the massive display of two Bravia TV’s positioned in the enormous windows as if they were mannequins: the TVs were treated respectfully, as items to be desired, rather than bartered to the lowest bidder.
 
A few steps further and I was at the entrance: light, bright, clean and inviting. Just like any women when she is shopping, I actually thought I might go inside for a browse. Now this tells me that Sony must be on the right track, as the reaction by most women to the entrance of a CE store with its usual, screaming, discounting and irreverent messages is to get away as soon as possible.
 
I would imagine that Sony has done its homework well. Around 75% of the traffic past that storefront were women and there purses were bulging ( I could tell this by the number of designer shopping bags they were carrying). Now, when you consider that Beijing is home to 26 Fortune Global 500 companies, the third most in the world behind Tokyo and Paris, that’s a well paid consumer that you don’t want to allow to escape.
 
Second, I have also held Sony slightly ahead of the pack after discovering that its US Playstation operation offer annual scholarships to women to enable them to commercially develop their gaming skills. Again, another ‘gender intelligent’ decision as women comprise one of the strongest gaming deomographics.
 
So Sony pushes ahead for starting to think like a women and then actually doing something about it, well in China and the US: now if we could only sees some signs in Australia .

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 11:13 pm and is filed under My Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.