Marketing To Families With Kids Part 1: New Strategies in Targeting Mothers

Summary
The report is part of a three-part series on marketing to families with children. It considers the factors determining how mothers shop for groceries, their roles as being responsible for nutrition and safety and as gatekeepers between kids and branding messages, and their own personal requirements and pressures. It evaluates the best strategies that can be adopted for success in each area.


Synopsis
- Identify how the attitudes of mothers on key lifestyle and attitude questions differ from those of women in general.

- Understand the extent to which mothers remain the key gatekeepers when marketing to families and children.

- Evaluate the difference in attitudes between mothers in conventional families, divorcees/widows, and single mothers.

- Understand the increasing complexity and risk associated with using traditional marketing styles to target new mothers and pregnant women.

- Analyze the impact of new technology and media platforms on the way in which marketers can reach mothers.

Reasons To Buy
- How are household sizes, family sizes, and the ages of mothers changing worldwide over time?

- How do values driving purchasing decisions differ between mothers and non-mothers, and between mothers in different family types?

- To what extent do mothers believe that sex equality exists in modern relationships, and to what extent is this belief justified?

- How are the platforms and media that marketers can use to target mothers changing?

- Do mothers trust consumer goods companies to do the best for their families?

Key Highlights
In Brazil, 64% of households contain at least one child; in Germany, the figure is just 23%. The median head of household in the developing world is shopping for a family including children, whereas the median head of household in a high income country is not. Clearly, this makes an enormous difference to living and shopping arrangements.

Women with children at home are more likely to believe that the sexes are treated equally (39%) than not (35%), whereas women without children at home are far more likely to believe that they continue to be treated unequally (41% not equal versus 30% equal).

78% of UK mothers with children at home owned a smartphone in 2013, compared to 39% of the overall population, while in the US the figure was 65%. This is reflected in the significant amounts of time that mothers spend networking and shopping online.