Women may still control the purse strings when it comes to household spending but the ‘shop till you drop’ mentality of the ’80s has given way to more discerning purchasing behavior today.

This according to a recent study by Grey Advertising Worldwide that concludes that one of the greatest challenges facing marketers today is making a meaningful and lasting connection to this new breed of calculating shoppers.

Rather than view shopping as a favorite pastime, women today see it as a chore they want to wrap up as quickly as possible, the study says, adding contemporary women say they’re less impulsive than they once were and don’t need as many material things as they once did.

Andy Krupski, president and ceo of Grey Canada, says a parallel Canadian study conducted by the agency replicated the findings of the u.s. research – although he says there were some differences with respect to the Quebec market.

As for women’s attitudes toward advertising, the Grey study reports that 60% of women say advertising is out of touch with everyday life. While that figure may be disheartening to many marketers, it is a vast improvement over the 86% of women who felt that way in 1995.

Women say they want advertising to depict a greater understanding of their lives and sensibilities, reflect their complex roles in society, show life after 30, highlight the partnership between men and women, and make them laugh.

‘Women are looking to get the information in a form that’s useful to them, just like everybody else, and expect to be treated like everyone else – not singled out like women of the 1940s and ’50s,’ says Krupski.

‘In light of the fact that there are more women in the workforce with higher income, [who are] more involved in more categories and aspects of purchasing, their expectation is fair and warranted.’

The depiction of women in advertising is changing, says Krupski, but adds there will always be an aspirational aspect to certain categories of products such as fashion, where portraying women as they are, rather than as they would like to be, may not be as effective.

Krupski cautions that marketers who fail to build a relationship between their brand and female consumers will suffer, while the rewards will be rich for marketers who go out of their way to court women.

‘In any category you want to pick, the first marketer who really connects to a significant segment of a target group will win hands down. That’s true of women in all facets of the marketing business – right from telecommunications down to automotive and retail.

‘Women are looking for information served up the way they want it. If you don’t deal with that issue, someone else will.’

Statistics compiled by Frankel & Co., a promotions firm based in Chicago, indicate that women currently control about 80% of spending in that country and that over the next 20 years their economic power will increase even more.

This control is steadily increasing in categories previously thought to be male-dominated such as automobiles, stocks, personal computers, home improvement and sports equipment.