The mother market

American Demographics, Oct, 1996 by Patricia Braus

Giving a woman good prenatal and maternity care can capture the health-care spending of her entire family for life. The next decade will bring several challenges to those who market maternity products and services, including fewer new mons, fewer babies in many markets, more minority mothers, and the end of childbearing for the baby-boom generation. The biggest challenge will be to provide a wide range of high-quality childbirth options in the cost-conscious world of managed health care.

Picture a bridal show in Atlanta, Georgia, teeming with brides-to-be, their even more anxious mothers, and dreamy younger sisters. You're approaching a booth that has a small television perched on a table. You have already seen videotapes hawking silver services and honeymoon resorts, but this one is different. Moving closer, you're transfixed by the screen.

It's a live birth. The booth is sponsored by Atlanta Women's Specialists, a group of doctors and midwives who want your business after the honeymoon.

Welcome to the anything-but-squeamish new world of marketing childbirth services. Not long ago, most things having to do with childbirth were only discussed in private. Today, childbirth is so much an element of public life that fashionable southern brides gravitate to films of the process.

The products and services of reproduction and childbirth are now sold by maternity specialists to working women who tend to be demanding, intelligent customers. Sales in this most womanly category have increased dramatically over the last decade, as the huge babyboom generation has moved through its childbearing years. Oral contraceptives were a $930 million market in 1990; 1995 sales are estimated at $1.5 billion by the research firm Find/SVR Retail sales of feminine-hygiene products in the U.S. have increased from $1.5 billion in 1989 to $1.8 billion in 1993, according to Packaged Facts.

But now the market is changing. As the first baby-boom women reach their 50th birthdays and enter menopause, childbirth marketers may find it necessary to take more aggressive approaches to maintain sales growth. The Atlanta Women's Specialists booth is an example of this new, more direct approach.

The movie goes from showing the live birth to scenes of the practice with the doctors and midwives at work. "It's intriguing,' says Lisa Borders Marbury, administrator for the practice. It just "draws people in. After a trade show, we get 20 to 30 new patients in the next month."

Efforts like Marbury's are not traditional and perhaps not suited to other markets. "We're not leading edge, we're bleeding edge," she says proudly. But most organizations that sell health services to young changes in the next decade.

A MARKET IN FLUX

Changes in the mother market will include slow growth in the numbers of women of childbearing age in most U.S. markets, along with a declining number of women in the peak years for childbearing. The overall market--the number of U.S. women aged 15 to 44--will increase from about 59 million in 1990 to 60 million in 2000, then remain unchanged until 2005. Yet the number of women in their peak childbearing ages, 20 to 34, is predicted to fall from 31 million in 1995 to 28 million in 2000 and 2005. The number of women aged 20 to 34 will not rebound to its 1995 level until after the year 2015, according to Census Bureau projections.

The annual number of births in the U.S. exceeded 4 million between 1989 and 1993, but it dropped just below 4 million in 1994 and is not expected to break that mark again until the year 2008. After 2008, births may rise again as the 69 million children of baby boomers born between 1977 and 1994 begin having children themselves. In the year 2018, births are projected to exceed 4.5 million.

The birth rate is also expected to fall through the late 1990s. Birth rates hit a postwar peak in 1957, when 25.3 babies were born for every 1,000 people in the population. But decline has been fairly steady since then with a brief upswing from 1988 to 1991. The rate stood at about 15.6 per 1,000 in 1995, and the Census Bureau expects it to sink to a record low of 13.9 in 2026. Fewer babies means more than just a tougher market for hospitals. It means fewer customers for childbirth related products, including drugs used in labor and delivery, products to help breast-feeding mothers, baby formula, and diapers.

While the national trend is for slow growth or stagnation, the number of births in some markets may continue to grow rapidly, while others could see absolute declines. The Northeast and the Midwest should see their population of 18-to-44-year-old women drop steadily until the year 2010, but western states may see a steady increase in this group. Southern states are expected to see their population of women aged 18 to 44 increase until the year 2000, then decrease to 1995 levels in 2010.

Birth rates will continue to vary by region. Some hospitals will see increasing numbers of babies if they are in a market where the population is younger than average or includes a high share of racial or ethnic minorities. Utah had the nation's highest birth rate in 1994, with 20.1 babies born for every 1,000 residents. In this case, nonminority Mormons are responsible for high birth rates. Maine had the lowest birth rate, with 11.6 per 1,000.