Daniel Semaya PSY/ORF 322 April 19, 2004 Final Project Proposal Advisor: Professor Cooper

Gender in Computer Product Marketing

For my project I would like to study gender differences in the marketing and targeting of computer products. Specifically, I would like to focus on the rare instances where major computer companies create products that target women and girls. I got the idea for this project in a recent conference call that I had with the iBook and PowerBook product marketing managers at Apple Computer where we discussed the fact that the company's current iBook product line is far more popular with women, especially on the Princeton campus. Additionally, Apple released the infamous "Flower Power" iMac in January 2001 which was marketed towards teenage girls. Other female-oriented computer products include Mattel's Barbie PC from 1999 and Apple's original iBook from, of which influential computer columnist John C. Dvorak, said was "so 'girly' it should sport a Barbie logo" just two weeks before the Mattel's Barbie PC was announced.

I intend to study past cases of female-oriented computer products and attempt to assess their success in terms of successfully marketing to the female gender.

Potential information sources: OIT's Mac computer sales lists - to look for a correlation between iBook sales and women at Princeton Apple's Product Marketing teams - to see if Apple has specific market research about women and computers.

Sources I have so far: Brown, Janelle. "The Barbie fixation." Salon.com.July 28, 1999. http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/07/28/barbie/

Brown, Janelle. "Will a Barbie computer make math easy?" Salon.com.August 4, 1999. http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/08/04/barbie/

DeMocker, Judy. "Do Girls Truly Hate Computers?" Wired News.July 1, 1998. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,13371,00.html

Dvorak, John C., "The iBook Disaster" PC Magazine. July 26, 1999. http://web.archive.org/web/20001203175600/www.zdnet.com/pcmag/ stories/opinions/0,7802,2301976,00.html

Sex Macs & Prada To Go(Interview with Sarah Jessica Parker). MacDirectory.com http://www.macdirectory.com/ntrvu/sjp/sjp3.html