January 31, 2011
In October, we unveiled the findings of our social shopping research. We’ve therefore had a few months to turn the data over and tease out any interesting trends …
“If you’d like to reach more women, you might like to consider incentivisation; but if you’re looking for brand advocates, it might be better to target men.”
Without running the risk of stereo-typing (!), we reviewed our data by gender and uncovered some surprising insights around shopping behaviour online. In the world of social shopping, women are the hunters; and, men are often far more “social” when it comes to sharing purchases or connecting with other consumers or brands.
We’ve created a slideshare to illustrate our findings and provide some next step ideas; and these are some of the key points:
- There’s still a marked differentiation in product categories: women are more heavily involved in clothes and beauty products; men lead in sports and technological products.
- Men gather information from a wide range of sources. Women hunt: their research is based on identifying the best prices or lowest discount.
- The female emphasis on discount is also evident in the value they place on incentives and rewards.
- Whilst women are less likely to refer to named sources of information than men; they are more likely to collaborate with others and actively seek advice out.
- Men are actually far more open to the “social” in social shopping. They lead in online mentions and post purchase actions; and nearly always trust the opinion of another consumer more than an expert or someone who works for the retailer.
- Male consumers are more open to being brand advocates than female consumers; and they are also more interested in connecting with other people who are involved with your brand.