Here’s something many CEOs don’t know but most women do: companies consistently fail to offer products and services that meet women’s needs. This means that companies are missing a meaningful opportunity. A global BCG X survey, supported by BCG’s expert Center for Customer Insights, of approximately 15,000 people in 12 countries, of whom about three-fourths were women, found that in key segments such as consumer goods, health care, and financial services, women do not believe that the products and services available to them readily meet their needs.
Women manage an estimated $31.8 trillion of global spending, according to Nielsen, and are expected to control 75% of discretionary spending worldwide in the next five years. Companies that don’t develop products explicitly tailored for women and their needs are leaving significant money on the table—something that BCG X’s Innovate Her team, which helps companies better address women’s needs, sees firsthand.
How can organizations do better? Companies can start by identifying women’s specific needs and preferences more directly, through both a quantitative and qualitative approach. Armed with those insights, they can identify gaps and develop new products and services—or, in some cases, adapt their current portfolio of products and services, assessing them through the lens of desirability, viability, and feasibility.
Key Findings
Our study looked at three sectors in terms of how effectively they meet women’s needs: health care, financial services, and consumer products. Although the sectors show variations, a consistent theme across all three is a dissatisfaction among women with the products and services available to them. (See Exhibit 1.)
Health care organizations have the most work to do. Women worldwide report responsibility for a majority of household health care decisions, from 66% in India to 83% in Germany and France. Yet fewer than half of women respondents across the globe (41%) agree that there are sufficient services to address their specific health concerns. Ratings of medical treatment or interactions with health insurers are similarly low—44% and 37%, respectively.
Those findings are in line with other data showing that the health care industry in many markets largely overlooks the unique needs of women. Consider that in the US, just 4% of research spending is targeted at women’s health. Women weren’t required to be included in clinical research studies until 1993—which is partly why they experience twice the rate of adverse events in approved drugs as men. One study found that women in emergency rooms wait 33% longer than men with the same symptoms.
A critical aspect of improving these issues is understanding the attributes of care that women prioritize. In our findings, these are quality care (cited by 87% of respondents), timely appointments (82%), affordability (82%), convenient locations for service (76%), and bias-free, fair, and impartial care (76%). Taking a step further, health care organizations need to understand how these needs differ across lifestyles. For example, 59% of women respondents with children worldwide find telehealth important, while only 37% of women without children do.
Hertility, a UK startup, is a good example of a company that focuses on women’s health care needs. Traditional health care often fails to address women’s reproductive or gynecological issues. Women face a confusing, costly, and slow system, with wide variations in coverage. Hertility offers personalized, at-home hormone and fertility tests, reproductive health consultations, and comprehensive care plans. Leveraging over 835,000 data points on female reproductive health, Hertility creates individualized care plans to meet each woman’s unique circumstances. It also partners with employers and national health systems to ensure that coverage is sufficiently funded and lobbies for expanded benefits, such as fertility treatments.
Financial institutions must meet women at specific life stages. We see a similar shortfall in financial services. Despite the fact that women are adding $5 trillion to the wealth pool every year, outpacing the growth of the wealth market overall, they experience significant gaps in how well the available products and services meet their needs.
On average, women are more concerned than men about the financial impact of major life events, like debt (a difference of 9 percentage points) and planning for retirement (8 points). These worries evolve across life stages. For example, Gen Z and millennial women rank unemployment as their top concern. For Gen X women, planning for retirement is higher on their list, while baby boomers cite elder care costs as their biggest worry. However, at most stages, women are more concerned than men. (See Exhibit 2.) READ MORE
By Beth Viner, Alexandra Friedman, Sam Juraschka, Nicole Walsh, Lauren Taylor, and TR Geng
Source: bcg.com
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