What Women Want -- Definitely Apple (AAPL) But Apparently Not Dillards (DDS)

Under the hood, Piqqem has been tracking trends across key demographic groups in our user base. I'll be commenting on them periodically here. One that jumped out at me today was this gem --  among Piqqem's female users, the most highly rated stock was Apple and the least highly rated was Dillards, the department store chain. This tells us a lot. Department stores have been struggling for some time. Witness the recent cutbacks at Macy's. Specialty retailers have, as well, but the most focused ones have weathered the downturn relatively well and maintained a stronger rebound position in the continuing secular shift away from high-end unified shopping experiences to mid-to-high specialized shopping experiences. Specialty retailers that have been able to connect well with non-teenage women have done fairly well, in some cases -- witness the relatively decent results from William-Sonoma. And while Apple has seen sales growth in its chain stores level off, I submit that a big reason why Apple has held strong is due to the attraction its products, stores, and services hold to women beyond the teenage years. Call me wrong but my focus group (my wife) went Apple a couple of years ago and now I worry any time she hits the mall with an Apple store. On the other hand, she loathes department stores of all stripes (such as Dillards). The upshot? Sell well to women of college age or older, make your products sticky (Chico's and Ann Taylor  had problems with that) and you might do OK in this environment.