Faith Popcorn - On Valentine’s Day 2008

by Faith Popcorn
Surveying the 2008 Valentine’s Day scene, the plethora of personalization options available stands out. It seems that anything “off the peg” will simply not cut it this year.
We’re seeing everything from help with customizing love notes, courtesy of www.mydearvalentine.com, which also offers a love meter to quickly measure compatibility, like eHarmony [...]

We Don’t Shop Like You: Behavior Differences for Men vs. Women in Online Shopping

Mars and Venus lives on in the e-shopping experience. Check-out these 5 insights to male and female online shopping behavior.
1. Men Seek and Destroy, Women Gather information and Save Time
True to their hunting heritage, men shop to kill. In studies guys talk of deals being sought and [...]

Gender, Confidence, Smarts and “Authority”

by Andrea Learned
I just read (in Dan Pink’s* blog) mention of some UK research that found that no matter how similarly “smart” men and women may actually be - it often boils down to a matter of confidence. It may be no surprise that the men in the study seemed more confident in feeling [...]

The Problem with Pink

By Christine Ryder (nee Schmidt)
This rant has been in the works for weeks and after reading Fara Warner’s post, I knew it was time to finish it.
As a girl, I shared a bubble-gum pink bedroom with my sister. The carpet was pink, the walls were pink, and our bed shams were pink, flowery, chiffon-y [...]

Gender “Inclusivity” and the Super Bowl

by Fara Warner
Two events in the past 10 days put me in mind of “gender inclusivity”—an idea that I put forward in my book, The Power of the Purse. The idea is that we have spent far too much time separating genders in our marketing efforts. That may seem strange coming from an author who [...]

Luxury Institute’s Guide to Luxury Brand Success in Economic Downturns

by Milton Pedraza
First the story was that luxury was omnipotent and luxury consumers were immune. Even affluents were trading up, they said, and luxury could do no wrong. Now the story is that luxury has lost its luster and even the wealthiest are bailing out.
Reality is that luxury is cyclical, and always has been, as [...]

Don’t hate me because I have a closet full of swag – I worked really hard to get all this free stuff.

A lot of people are ticked off about the recent New York Times article about beauty Bloggers getting gratis beauty products.  Jezebel and Gawker, self-proclaimed media experts, said:“disgraceful and foul that so many women would be so gaily complicit in the efforts of the large cosmetics companies to ever-fatten the profit margins gleaned by milking [...]