Women think of shopping in an interpersonal, human fashion, and men treat it as more instrumental. It’s a job to get done.
Women are more focused on the experience, men on the mission.
Women react more strongly than men to personal interactions with sales associates.
Out of the many aspects that can influence a customer’s decision-making behavior, one of the major factors is gender.
Men and women approach shopping with different motives, perspectives, rationales, and considerations.
Men are more likely to respond to the more utilitarian aspects of the experience—such as the availability of parking, whether the item they need is in stock, and the length of the checkout line.
So how can we apply these observations to the online experience and customer journey?
The fact that women love to shop is no novelty. We enjoy browsing for clothes, trying out multiple outfits and we can tirelessly hop from one store to another with the aim of finding that perfect pair of stilettos.
But what about men? Why do we always encounter half-asleep men, unamusingly sitting in the corner chair, hopping their feet while their significant other is trying their 15th pair of jeans?
Here are some examples of how the online behavior of men and women reflects their different cognitive styles and what distinguishes their interactions.
Reasons to go online—Men are more oriented toward impersonal or individualistic goals. Women are more oriented toward social integration.
While women enjoy the browsing process, men are more task-oriented and focus on how well they are able to accomplish a task and find what they are looking for.
Women focus on socializing and communication, spend more time doing social networking and writing email messages.
Men care more about functionality and are more likely to use a website as a tool—for example, to check the weather; get news, sports, political, and financial information; or download software.
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Thank you ….Women are much more concerned about online security. They tend to need more information to make a decision—which ties in with the results shows women read more pages than men—prefer different colors, read more ad copy, read in details and care more about bargains.
Men, on the other hand, tend to be more impulsive shoppers, prefer headlines and bullet points, and are less concerned about shipping costs than women.
Successful product marketing is looking at products and services from the customers’ or users’ point of view. User-centered design (UCD) optimizes products for how users need to use them, rather than forcing users to change their behavior to use a product.
An important variable that we can use to differentiate between users is gender. There are inherited differences between the cognitive style of men and women—in other words, the way men and women think, perceive, and remember information.
“The virus doesn’t discriminate,” I hear the couple at the table next to me say over their lunch. I am not purposefully listening in, but the COVID-19 recovery reality means the café is partially empty, and it’s easier to overhear conversations.
They continue to discuss their concerns for how long coronavirus will impact our world, and one notion becomes glaringly apparent.
The woman appears to be far more concerned for the families and society around them than her partner. His focus is on team structure, business as ‘usual’ and financial recovery.
Hers is about the wellbeing and safety of teachers and office staff as society returns to some version of normal.
How will people return to the office without full time school support?
How will those that work in public environments stay safe?
Do you want to add a word or two?….
Women’s brains are hardwired to focus more on the emotional nature of things and on nurturing the emotional space.
Men’s brains are more focused on hearing the emotion and then turning it to find a solution.
While these differences naturally exist, women can work to enhance their own self-control by finding tools to regulate their emotional state when needed and to act or make decisions when they are better able to regulate them.
Tools such as breathing, meditation, taking a walk, etc. can help in managing the emotions and bringing more self-control to the situation.
Your Comments……
While women can work on their leadership skills to enhance their ability to move up in the career ladder, systemic change is also necessary to allow for more women leaders.
What can organizations do to enhance systems that enable the best person, and not the best man, to advance into leadership roles?
In addition to buying for themselves, women buy on behalf of husbands, partners, kids, colleagues, adult children, friends, relatives, elderly parents, in-laws, their businesses and even their kids’ friends, to name just a few.
If somebody, somewhere needs a gift, chances are there’s a woman thinking about it; tracking it down; wrapping it; making sure it’s accompanied by a personal message and then arriving to the person on the appointed day.
I sometimes think entire industries would collapse overnight if women stopped being so thoughtful. Consider the impact to the greeting card industry alone.
Throughout modern history, women have been the primary grocery shoppers.
Today, however, the gender gap on aisle four has been closed. Even though both sexes are dashing to the store to pick up ingredients for dinner, the items they put in their carts and the amount they’re willing to pay differs.
The differences between men and women with regards to their online shopping behavior’s. I will present differences but also, highlight how these differences are not binary at all, in other words, that they by no means apply to all men and women.
I don’t seek to make sweeping generalizations that paint a whole gender in one way or another.
I seek to present a argument explaining how differently a large proportion of men and women behave when buying online. But even more, I seek to also present counter points which demonstrate how behavior’s that the majority of a gender engage in don’t apply to everyone in that gender.
The purpose of this is to demonstrate that there is no black or white, but shades of grey and that there is no case where all men or all women behave in a specific way in all circumstances.
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