Tag Archives: gender

marketing to women, women

More support needed for women to take the lead

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I am proud to be a founder member of the Women’s Equality party known as WE.

But like the motoring Club I run, too many men and sadly women think this sort of gender based stuff is simply feminist fluff with us only wanting things all our own way.

We even hear excuses like ‘there aren’t enough women to take the lead’…

Well here we are and I hope you voted for the RIGHT candidates yesterday. Even if it meant taking a ‘risk’ on women for the first time? How else can we prove our mettle if we aren’t given that chance?

But perhaps the email I received from the party this morning might explain why voting for WE (women and men) and supporting FOXY Lady Drivers Club, is all about making things better for women and in turn for men too. It’s important to see the BIG picture before making gender assumptions and simply walking away…

And in the same way as FOXY Lady Drivers Club looks to the motor industry to support it, the WE party looks to men and women alike to support it. Much as the money raised by Sandy’s speaking tour goes towards WE. For us all to do a better job for everyone. Which isn’t difficult, given the state of things in politics and some areas of the motor industry today…
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This is the email I received this morning (Friday 6 May 2016).

Womens-Equality-Party

“We — Catherine and Sandi — founded the Women’s Equality party to shake up politics and push gender equality on to the agenda. We aimed not only to make change directly, but also to influence the old parties to up their game.

Because of you, that has already happened. Our brilliant campaigns in Wales, Scotland and London, each managed locally and powered by our amazing activists, forced all the other parties to focus on issues that too often are sidelined or ignored. WE turned the debate to caregiving and the gender pay gap and violence against women and WE then watched the other parties sidle up to our manifestos and scoop up our policies to repackage as their own.

Together WE have started something — a party, a movement, a realisation that things must change — and the elections were just the start.

Of course we are on the edges of our seats waiting for the results. There’s not one of our candidates who wouldn’t lift the standard of politics and bring the sorts of perspectives that are so badly lacking.

But we are also already celebrating, and what we are celebrating is YOU. You have helped WE to win in making a difference. And when WE win, everyone wins. Because equality is better for everyone.”

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Hear, hear. And I support WE because it is the right thing to do.

I’m proud of WE for doing it.

And if YOU haven’t joined WE yet, can I suggest you do so NOW!

Because it’s money they need to stand up to the big budget boys in politics.

Have a look at the WE website please and JOIN US.

And I guarantee that if you are looking for a better motoring deal, women’ll struggle to find a better one than joining FOXY Lady Drivers Club too.

garage services

Why are women rip off targets by some garages?

woman_ventingIt’s never good news when you read what seems to be a case of a garage attempting to rip-off a female.

And tackling a female that knew more about tyres than the Kwik-Fit fitter in this instance.

Being charitable, perhaps he was a new member of staff, doing his best?

Not realising that £360 to fix a puncture was a tad outside the customer’s expectation .

But at worst this was a cynical ploy to exploit a motorist who just happened to be female and motoring savvy.

And therein lies the difficulty because female motorist perceptions are such that we imagine this sort of thing happens more often than it does. Although this IS an industry where it does…

The Ripple Effect

When I set up FOXY 11 years ago I did so because I was horrified to think that any Tom, Dick or Joanna could set up a garage and profess to know what they were doing when my brakes needed sorting. Or that I’d be sold expensive tyres when I didn’t need them. My stepdaughter had been well and truly ripped off by a garage rogue and showed no remorse when we tackled him together…

So I wanted to identify the genuinely good garages from the mediocre and worse, requiring the ones we promoted to women to sign the FOXY Promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell motoring services they don’t need.’

The majority of UK garages would never do this I feel sure but that isn’t the point. The point is that too many women think they WILL be ripped off and, despite their independence, numbers and wealth, feel very uncomfortable in macho garage environments. This results in too many women not getting their tyres checked as often as they should and not going to garages to get their cars serviced as often as they should.

So their cars aren’t as well maintained or as safe as they should be – and could be dangerous as a consequence.

And many good garages are missing out on this business, because local ladies don’t realise they have a FEMALE CHOICE.

Sadly some fast-fit businesses cannot sign the FOXY Promise because they pay their staff minimum wages, knowing they will respond to a sales campaign to sell specific services and products to earn commission. So, in a nutshell, some motor industry businesses WILL sell motorists services they don’t need. Female and male customers alike. I do not like this…

FOXY Lady Approved standards

Any FOXY Lady Approved garage joins our network on the basis of FOXY’s pre-determined minimum standards. This could be one of the following – a listing on the IMI Professional Register, a Chartered Trading Standards Institute Code of Practice scheme and other evidence of being better than the rest.

Our standards are based on quality, value for money, cleanliness and customer service although some are more modest than others, to keep prices down. Otherwise this wouldn’t be a FOXY Choice. In addition to an initial compliance visit, we expect all garages to provide a minimum level of good female feedback each year to secure their network place. Most do this easily.

I would rather not comment further about Kwik-Fit other than to say that I honestly think they are working hard to up their game. There will always be weak links in a massive organisation and, providing Kwik-Fit acts upon this negative feedback then that will surely strengthen their internal culture?

But will they be given time to change their spots without changing their brand name? The minute there is a bad story (and where do sensationalist headline hunters head for to get one?) the same old bile is unleashed again from motorists and trade professionals alike. And bad news reflects on us all.

Buying cheap garage services is a risky option

Another risky area in the motor industry is to do with comparison websites and garage brokers who market what they do on the basis of price. We are all conditioned to compare prices and buy the cheapest insurance, and or goods on supermarket shelves. But in an unregulated motor industry where servicing check-lists can easily be ticked (without the check-list ticks being checked ie sometimes the ticked jobs haven’t been done) how can it make sense to buy cheap? When you could be up-sold expensive services (like £360 for a puncture perhaps?) or not realise when safety corners have been cut.

A lady I spoke to yesterday thought she was being ripped off because her MOT garage tried to sell her a car service after 3 years of not having one. I was able to explain that the MOT doesn’t look after her potentially expensive and neglected engine – she then realised that these are complementary nor competing checks and her garage was simply being honest and transparent. But she didn’t know enough to realise this at the outset…

Finally, another area we should all be wary of is when you buy via a garage broker ie you pay a central organisation without knowing which garage (or their credentials) will eventually repair your car. Obviously a broker has negotiated a cheap price to add his cut on top, before selling to you. Yes, you might get your car collected and returned to your doorstep after car servicing, but you mightn’t know how to check the work they have – or haven’t done.

I could write a lot more because this is my subject but I think I’ve probably said enough. So perhaps it’s sufficient to round up by saying…

Here’s how to steer clear of bad garages (and help other motorists)

1) Join the Club and see what else we do here.

2) Help us do a better job in future by posting recent garage feedback here, good, bad or indifferent, for us to share. If you are female and the business is a FOXY Lady Approved one you’ll get a free Club membership (online lifetime one) as a thank you from the business, for your time and comments.

3) If you want to see where your nearest FOXY Lady Approved business is, follow these links.

To see your nearest FOXY Lady Approved tyre service (tyres, wheels, that sort of thing)

To see your nearest FOXY Lady Approved garage/repairer/car dealer for any MOT, servicing and/or repair work.

And by all means call the office on 01903 879988 for more details if we can help you.

FOXY

PS: Here’s the link to the offending Kwik-Fit story if you’ve read this far.

women

Why women find Vauxhall Astra drivers appealing

astra_award_womenWe were interested to see which cars random females would like to see potential partners drive and what that tells us about them. So when we heard about a new survey carried out by VoucherCodesPro involving 2,787 single female respondents over 18, we wanted to know more…

… but would never have believed that the Vauxhall Astra would be the female choice of an attractive set of wheels (when driven by a good looking male we presume) with the majority stating that the car a prospective partner drives is likely to dictate whether their relationship has a future.

Why does the car he drives matter to women?

When asked why the car a potential partner drives matters, the top 5 results were as follows:

1.      A nice car is a sign of wealth/financial security – 56%
2.      Men with nice cars respect themselves, and women, more – 27%
3.      I can tell a man’s personality type by the kind of car he drives – 22%
4.      The kind of car a man drives reflects his maturity levels– 18%
5.      I love cars and like to be with a man who shares my passion – 11%

The same respondents were then asked to list the car they found the most attractive (for potential male partners to drive) as follows.

24% of respondents voted for the Vauxhall Astra
19% the BMW 1 Series
14% the Audi A3
11% the Land Rover Discover 4.

Finally, respondents were asked to reveal whether or not they had ever finished with a former partner because of their relationship with a car or their driving behaviour, with more than one in ten (12%) admitting that they had done so.

Clearly VoucherCodesPro George Charles was as surprised by the Vauxhall choice as stated.

“I would have expected the sports cars to come out on top of this study, but it shows that you don’t always have to splash out to get a car that could attract a future partner! The Vauxhall Astra may not be the most glamorous of cars, but may be more attractive than you think. Perhaps it shows to a woman that a man is stable and looking to settle down into a mature relationship?”

I wonder what his verdict would be about the 40% car-less Millennials today?

My personal opinion is that these results will depend on the sample of women as much as the choice of cars they were given to make these decisions.

And finally, the indisputable fact for me is that if Daniel Craig pulled up outside my house in a Renault Grand Scenic alongside Donald Trump in a Lambo I know which car I’d get in.

Hurrah – the thought of this happening has really lightened my mood on an otherwise dreary Budget day.

FOXY

women drivers

Surprising celebrity cars

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Celebrity culture influences us all it seems.

A guilty pleasure for many (says she), as in reading the likes of OK and Hello magazines in hairdressers, marvelling at the extravagance of celebrity homes, weddings and seemingly designer babies.

And whilst Top Gear stars might put reasonably priced cars through their paces on TV, surely they’d have Aston Martins or Ferraris in their centrally-heated garages not the likes of the Suzuki Liana, Chevrolet Lacetti or Kia Cee’d they’d pretended to enjoy driving under the spotlight?

But maybe we’re wrong to think this?

Certainly findings from Vertu Lease Cars suggest we are and that many celebrities choose surprisingly modest motors – for image reasons or environmental concerns perhaps.

Female celebrity car choices

Most of us know the Queen enjoys driving her highly practical Range Rover Sport across her Scottish estate.

jennifer_lawrenceBut did you know that Jennifer Lawrence drives a VW Eos?

Which is a very stylish and lesser known VW convertible which is also highly affordable for others to drive, even without a paparazzi in tow…

Or that pop icon Madonna drives a Mini Cooper? Just imagine her pulling up alongside you in the local Tesco car park without you noticing who it was! Unlikely but remotely possible of course.

Male celebrity car choices

Whereas some of the male ‘celebrities’ we’re told about have made less predictable choices in our opinion.

leo_carFor example, Justin Bieber drives a Smart for Two which he badges as Swag Car for fun.

And Wayne Rooney in an unremarkable Ford Ka which we imagine was probably bought by his foxy car shopping wife?

And bear-fighting Leonardo di Caprio keeping his coveted Oscar in the glovebox of his environmentally-friendly Toyota Prius, perhaps?

But it was the thought of latter day macho film icon Clint Eastwood squeezing into a Fiat 500 that really made our day!
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Thank you Vertu Cars for sharing this automotive insight (and that of other celebrity cars) whilst reminding us that all these cars are affordable and available to us all to buy or lease.

Even if so-called celebrity status isn’t part of that deal!

FOXY

women

Why Women Drivers Matter

mary_barra_changeOn International Women’s Day one’s thoughts can happily turn to our own gender, hopefully without someone feeling the need to tell me there’s no International Men’s Day.

Well there mightn’t be but so what? If I want to write about women, celebrate feminism, praise the achievements of my gender, the new Women’s Equality Party and/or remind everyone why women matter then so be it.

Men have been patting themselves on their backs for years and that’s fine by me. But today it’s our turn and sadly the gender news in the motor industry isn’t as self congratulatory as it might look to those that don’t know how to scratch the surface here.

But let’s take this step by step…

1) The economic importance of women drivers

As you know, my blog is about women and motoring (by and large) so you can expect me to confine my comments to this area. So it’s worth reminding ourselves that the number of women drivers on UK roads will soon overtake that of men on our roads. So that’s close to 50% of all car tax, insurance and fuel payments/taxation straight away. We were at 47% of license holders last year for your information…

Then let’s add in the fact that women buy about half of all ‘new’ cars in their own right, influencing as many as 80% of all cars bought*. By influence, that’s when ‘he’ chooses the car but says to the salesman ‘that’s what I want but my wife/partner needs to approve this before I pay’. In the US they say this female influence accounts for as many as 90% of car sales. And some car dealers put this at 100%, based on evident experience (and a wicked sense of down-trodden humour I suspect).

* estimated as two million brand new cars and some five million used cars.

2) The female motoring multiplier effect

The point of this massive consumer motoring influence is that this also represents jobs in manufacturing plants, jobs in UK car dealerships, in garages and automotive suppliers – as well as the spin off effect of the jobs created to serve the expenditure from these jobs and so on. So what women buy (or not?) influences jobs and the businesses that do best and so on.

At FOXY Lady Drivers Club we feel the female shopping effect particularly strongly when it comes to buying garage services today. Like the many cars women are increasingly buying online (rather than going to unfriendly garages/car dealerships) an increasing number of busy females are shopping for MOT’s, car servicing and both mechanical & bodywork repairs online, often at night, for the family fleet. Even if those women then delegate the test drive and/or garage visit to a male (that’s another story for another blog…).

3) Is our fantastic motor industry as good as it could be?

Let’s look at the key statistics taken from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) excellent Facts Guide (2015).

+ The UK automotive industry turnover was a cool £69.5 billion in 2015
+ There are more than 32 million cars on our roads
+ More than 1.5 million cars were built in the UK in 2014
+ 2.47 million new cars were first registered in 2014
+ Nearly 800,000 individuals are employed in the UK automotive industry
+ 7 out of 10 F1 teams are based in the UK
+ 80% of the world’s largest automotive suppliers are based in the UK

Impressive figures for sure but let’s remember – this is the industry that we women are paying our fair share towards and much as I’d love to carry on crowing about it, I can’t because it doesn’t represent our female needs. But it should.

In a nutshell this industry needs to be a lot more female friendly than it is. Too many women prefer visiting dentists than garages. Recent research** suggests 90% of a Mumsnet and Reevoo female sample would not go car shopping without a man and women are three times more likely to report an ‘awful’ than ‘excellent’ experience in a dealership.

How can this be good enough for such important customers I have to ask?

**See Different Spin research.

Don’t you think we women deserve better than this guys, when you see why we should matter so much more to you?

4) The missing female industry talent

Whilst it’s International Women’s Day and a chance to celebrate our female influence in the automotive industry I’m sad to end this blog on a negative note, although this can become a future positive given genuine intent.

In a recent film project involving ITN, the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) suggests that a woeful 2% of jobs in this industry are occupied by women. I was horrified and have questioned this. Can it possibly be so low?

Accurate or not, diversity needs to be a top level strategic Board agenda objective and reported on annually by both the SMMT and the RMI (Retail Motor Industry Federation) about their respective memberships. We should surely benchmark best gender practice wherever we find it, to encourage the many laggards here to get their act together, once and for all, to represent female customers (and future employees) in the Boardroom. Only then will the ambitious female talent pipeline have somewhere appealing to head for in this industry rather than the many more female friendly career destinations we compete with.

5) Quotas are needed in the motor industry

I suggest we measure this gender outcome in future International Women’s Days to come. Quite frankly I’m not interested in Lord Davies’ token 25% gender targets now. We’re too far behind to follow his footsteps gently. We need an urgent and determined stride towards the only gender metric that really matters – 50:50. And we’re SO far away from this goal in the UK automotive industry that I can’t see us getting there without QUOTAS.

If I’m wrong, and I’d love to be, pray tell me how come waiting for the female creme de la creme to rise to the top of the automotive industry naturally hasn’t happened to date? And why it would do in future without benchmark quotas to meet? It certainly isn’t because we aren’t good enough.

If you are against quotas (as I was originally) please work out how long it’ll take to be fair to female employees and customers if we don’t impose female quotas? But don’t tell me you would only want to be chosen ‘for being the best’ because you aren’t even in the final selection process as is…

How can 2% of jobs allocated to women in any industry be fair enough or suggest that any women who were chosen in a future quota aren’t good enough (or even the best) to too many male Board members who clearly don’t want any sitting at their top table?

As I see it, the time is right for gender quotas in the automotive industry and not just in the UK one either. I don’t see the industry has a choice unless women continue to let it get away with this any longer.

By all means tell me what you think via Twitter @FOXYSteph or info@foxyladydrivers.com.

And if any automotive businesses would like my help to get on the female radar ahead of others, be sure to get in touch with me via my personal website.

FOXY

NB: Our country earns a similar amount of motoring-related tax as it spends on defence, and twice as much as we spend on education it seems. I also wish more women voted hence my support for the Women’s Equality Party.