Men tend to have completely opposite purchasing styles from women.  Men are priority based, while it seems women are more about maximizing an opportunity.  For example, men will decide up front what it is that they need to purchase.  The will focus on the essential features or necessities, and narrow down options based upon basic elimination.  On the other hand, women utilize discovery to determine the product to be purchased.  They begin with the concept of the problem and explore as many options as possible.  They tend to decide at the very end of the process, and extra features tend to be a deciding factor.

Marti, from what I saw, is an author as well as a member of the Trend Sight group.  Her information was extremely valuable and appropriate to any marketing.  One of her final points summarized excellently:  designing for women tends to expand the appeal of the product for men.  She also eluded to proper research techniques dealing with women.  For example, producing qualitative results from surveys and focus groups.  Regarding the focus groups, she mentioned having female only groups so as to not influence conversational dynamics by a male presence.

Another speaker Thursday morning was Bryan Nesbitt, from GM North America.  I found his talk to be quite timely and very significant.  His presentation was a discussion of a transition from a silo-ed design methodology to one that provides a balance between engineering, design, and manufacturing.  More specifically, equality in development between industrial design and engineering.  One of his points was the undervaluation of design during the development process.   He emphasized the responsibility of the designers to follow through with engineering and manufacturing, after it has passed initial design phases, in order to control design intent and finished quality.

Bryan illustrated GM’s situation by explaining their collaborative effort between color, component design, and the finished quality of the product.  A balance within the design process enabled significant growth and improvement within the design department, as well as the finished products.  Along with this design balance was an emphasis on designing for the emerging markets.  For the automotive industry, that is typically India and China.