Giving Thanks - The ConsumHERist

Posted on | November 27, 2008 |

by Delia Passi

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Maybe you’ve pulled yourself away from the parade, the dinner table, or the football games to check to see what wisdom I have to offer this Thursday. More likely it’s now Monday after the holiday, so I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.

Marcio Jose Sanchez -- Associated Press

Did you go shopping? No? A lot of women find Black Friday to be something of a celebration. That’s why some stores open at midnight the night before. I’m not among those vampire shoppers myself, but I understand the attraction.

I recently encountered an article about women retailers observing stores in a Minnesota mall to get ideas. What caught my attention was a vehement reaction by one reader to a single phrase “and – being women – snuck in a little shopping on the side.” The commenter said it made her gag, and the site added that “10 of 12 people liked this comment.” (Before you get side-tracked with a stray thought, the article was written by a woman.)

Why get upset? Put me in a mall and ask me to study the shopping experience and I’m sure going to get the urge to do some empirical research myself. If I can pull myself away from the thought of carting home some great buy I stumbled across, I might even find it in myself to analyze why that store got my business.

So what’s the fuss about? Is it not okay to be a woman that likes to shop? Is it not okay to think like a woman, behave like a woman, buy like a woman, speak, feel or respond like a woman? Women have our own characteristics, and we have no reason to deny them, or be put off by the mention of them.

I hate to disappoint the millions of throwbacks from the “burn your bra” era, but marketers and women alike think it’s okay to be appreciated for our differences. So what that we love to shop, that we take 30% more time in malls, that we like to do more research than men before we buy, that we ask for directions. Why take issue or get downright defensive when someone simply points out a characteristic of ours?

If the article had talked about men on a similar visit to the mall, and said how “being men, they stopped into the mall’s sports bar and enjoyed watching the ballgame over burgers and beers,” would you expect a lot of men to take issue with the reporter? I certainly wouldn’t.

Let’s give thanks that we are women. Let’s appreciate our differences from men, and boy, are they abundant. I’d rather go to a good clearance sale than a sports bar any time.

Delia Passi, Founder of WomenCertified® and author of Winning the Toughest Customer: The Essential Guide to Selling to Women is a regular columnist on ReachingWomenDaily.