What Women Want

Ready to research the booming women's market? Check out these sources:

• The Center for Women's Business Research offers a broad range of original research and statistics on women business owners.

• Women and sports, women and health, and women and fitness are on the mind of consultant Andrea Learned, whose Web site, includes numerous articles on reaching women.

• At the online library of the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, you can download academic studies and papers on a variety of small-business topics, including the unique way women business owners network with each other.

• Marketing to women via the Internet need not be a shot into the darkness of cyberspace with some insights from marketing resources site Taming the Beast.

• Keep up on trends fueled by women in business at the site of the National Association for Women Business Owners.

• The Insight Research Corp. summarizes speeches that its executives give at conferences on its Web site; targeting women and specialty niches within the women's market is a topic they address often.

• Another research firm, Ipsos, summarizes its findings on the women's market at its Web site.

• All About Women Consumers is a veritable encyclopedia of statistics, demographics and trends about American women's consumption preferences. The most current edition was published in 2002 by Paramount Books.

Joanne Cleaver has written for a variety of publications, including the Chicago Tribune and Executive Female.

This article was originally published in the February 2004 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: What Women Want.