By Randy Tucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Marketing and advertising consultant Mary Lou Quinlan

Most retailers have women to thank for their economic prosperity.

After all, more than 80 percent of all purchases are either made or strongly influenced by women.

But like a jilted lover, many women feel betrayed by retailers for whom they have done so much but received so little in return, says Mary Lou Quinlan, a New York-based marketing and advertising consultant who worked for several agencies in Cincinnati in the early 1990s.

"Women are angry, and they're retaliating against some of the issues they have with retailers,'' said Quinlan, former CEO of the prestigious N.W. Ayer advertising agency. "Whenever sales are down, we hear retailers blaming the weather, the economy or some other factor and asking, 'Where are the shoppers?' If they would instead ask, 'Where are the women,' the answers would become much clearer to them."

Quinlan - who Tuesday will speak to the Advertising Club of Cincinnati as part of her national book tour for Just Ask A Woman: Cracking the Code of What Women Want and How They Buy - has spent the past three years interviewing more than 3,000 women about how, what and why they buy.

She discovered the main reason many retailers struggle to keep women's attention, loyalty - and their dollars - is that that most women feel largely ignored by the retailers who sell to them.

"Anybody who is selling anything to women should be marketing with women, not to them,'' Quinlan said. "Marketing with women as partners and really listening to them as opposed to paying lip service is the key to getting her dollars.''

The apparel industry is a prime example.

For years, many American women have complained that much of the designer clothing sold in department stores comes in uncommonly small sizes.

But retailers have just recently begun adding more variety to women's clothing sizes.

"It's as if retail has to catch up to women,'' Quinlan said. "Many retailers continue to underestimate the savvy and taste of women.''

Quinlan blames the antiquated methods that many retailers use to determine what their customers want for the disconnect between the seller and their mostly female buyers.

"It isn't that retailers don't try to listen, but they're listening to 2003 women in 1950s ways,'' she said. "They do focus groups or surveys, but it's always something with a moderator in the middle that makes the consumer feel as if she's an experiment. The quickest way a retailer can find out what a woman wants is to stand next to the cash register or listen over the door to the fitting room, something that's face-to-face. You'll end up hearing a rundown of what's going on in their lives and what's not going on in your store.''

E-mail rtucker@enquirer.com