ABSTRACT
WHEN A WOMAN DISCOVERS she is expecting her first baby, she is more likely to see herself as a fecund mother-to-be than as the target for advertisers. Yet while ‘Dinkies’ and ‘Yuppies’ kept marketing account managers in business in the 1980s, now it is ‘Ferns’ (first-time expectant mothers) who are being wooed as a highly profitable consumer group. Their nine-month magazine-fuelled shopping spree may end with a jolt almost as startling as the birth itself, with the revelation that they have spent their hard-earned cash on largely useless objects and products.
