The Social Shopping Explosion. By Gender.

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.

Latest Posts

If you’re in financial services marketing and you’re still thinking Google is the only place your audience starts searching – you’re behind. Today, people are asking their questions on TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, and to AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. They want answers fast, and in a way that feels…
Read More
If you’re a designer or marketer who’s tired of creating content that gets lost in the endless scroll, this one’s for you. Know Your Canvas (And Its Quirks) Each platform has its own personality, and your designs need to respect that. Instagram loves vertical formats that fill the screen, whilst…
Read More
TikTok has just made it even easier to enjoy the music you discover on the app by adding YouTube Music as a new music-saving option. Now, if you come across a song you like while scrolling, you can quickly save it straight to your YouTube Music playlist with just a…
Read More