Hunter-Gatherer Society
There are some theories about the hunter-gatherer society and how it affects the way men and women shop. Men hunted, and women gathered. Men had to find their prey and spear it right away or lose it. Women would forage for the just the right berries, and just the right mushrooms or they risked killing their family. Some claim that this is why men buy, and women shop. It’s all about survival.
Women Buy More Than Men
There are a lot of jokes about spendthrift women, and how women control the purse strings, but there are reasons for this. Even in today’s modern society, women do most of the child rearing and caring for a family’s needs. Therefore the lion’s share of shopping falls to women. Not for handbags and shoes, but for items her entire family needs.
Marketing to Women vs Men You Must Appeal to Women to Access Others
Women buy for men, their parents, their children, and their friends. If you want to sell your electric razor, you need to appeal to the woman in his life. If you want to sell almost anything from items for the elderly to items for children, it’s important to do the research necessary to appeal to the shoppers in their lives.
Create a Connection with Your Audience
Whether your market consists of mostly men or women, the one thing that remains the same is that your ability to get your audience to purchase from you lies in whether or not you’ve managed to establish a connection with them. Understand why and how your audience buys anything. Once you can connect the why and the how with the emotional connection to your audience, you’ll make more sales.
Keep Studying Your Market
As much as things seem to stay the same, they do change over time. Today more men than ever before are responsible for child care and family care and more women are breadwinners. Who knows what effect this will have on buying decisions for men and women. It’s up to you as a marketer to keep doing your research and never stop studying your particular market. It’s very dangerous to say “always” anything when it comes to marketing.
Studies show that most men spend an average of about 20 minutes shopping, while women can shop all day and choose not to buy anything. If men compromise most of your audience then you’ll need to keep that in mind. If women comprise most of your audience you can rest assured they are going to want to find all the information they can, compare you to others, and then make their choice.