Calbee Inc.¡¯s granola snack had been around for 20 years, with no real change to its recipe or sales. Then a female marketing executive turned things around by pitching the cereal as a time-saver for a growing class of consumers just like her: working mothers.
The strategy clicked, revenue jumped and so did the snack maker¡¯s stock price. Success coincided with a push by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe¡¯s government to boost women in the workforce. More companies like Calbee, whose chairman, Akira Matsumoto, is a vocal advocate of diversity, are starting to see working moms as a lucrative niche in a domestic market that¡¯s shrinking overall.
¡°Some companies have woken up to the fact that the vast majority of their customers were women and perhaps having women involved in planning might be a way to increase revenue,¡± said Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
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