Online Shopping Behavior by Gender and Age has been our most popular post since we started this blog in 2012. It has been viewed thousands of time. Thank you!
As a result, with the start of 2016, we are updating this post with EIGHT new sources of information (all published in 2015) on online shopping and gender and age, in alphabetical order. Click on any of the links to read more from each source.
E-commerce Chart: Online shopping Behaviors of Millennials Versus Baby Boomers by Daniel Burstein and Liva LaMontagne for Marketing Sherpa:
“This month (July 2015) , Neustar released a survey it conducted with the E-tailing group on 1,020 shoppers — 50% male, 50% female who spent at least $250 online, purchased online at least four times annually and owned smartphones. Their research shows that the biggest differences between millennials and baby boomers.”
E-commerce Demographic Report: In a Reversal, Women Are Now Dominating Mobile Shopping by Cooper Smith for Business Insider with data from Business Intelligence:
“Of U.S. consumers who say they’ve completed a purchase on a mobile device in the last month, 66.5% are women and 33.5% are men. Compare that to 2013, when a greater share of men than women completed purchases on mobile. Women are more actively researching products and retailers on mobile devices than men. Women are also more likely than men are to look up store locations on mobile devices.Women are more likely to be influenced by coupons and marketing campaigns compared to men. 27% of women and 20% of men say coupons influence their purchasing decisions, according to a study published by the National Retail Federation.”
Gen X and Baby Boomers Present a Huge Opportunity for Online Retailers by Cooper Smith for Business Insider:
“The conventional wisdom is that teens and millennials drive E-commerce trends. In actuality, a disproportionate share of middle-aged consumers are shopping online. 23% of online shoppers fall between the ages of 35 and 44, while only 18% of the US population is that age. 24% of online shoppers are between the ages of 45 to 54, even though less than 20% of the U.S. population falls between those ages.”
How Gender, Age, and Left-Handedness Affect E-Commerce Behavior by Ayaz Nanji for Marketing Profs::
According to a French study of 4,000 consumers: “Women are more active than men on E-commerce Web sites,women click 30% more on Web sites than men; women view 12% more pages; women hesitate 10% less before clicking on a page element; and women purchase 7% faster than men.”
“Younger (18-34 years old) and older (45-64 years old) consumers generally behave similarly on E-commerce sites, though there are some differences. Older consumers view 4% fewer pages; and older consumers’ hesitation time is 30% longer.”
How Your Buying Behavior Can Predict Your Gender by Krystina Gustafson for CNBC:
“When [online] subscription beauty service Birchbox started selling men’s sample boxes three years ago, the company’s founders quickly learned there are certain shopping habits that distinguish men from women. Whereas, females would test samples that the company sent them in the mail — sometimes purchasing a full-size version of an item they really liked — men would immediately snatch up six to a dozen versions of the same thing. “Birchbox was so unaccustomed to such buying behavior that its Web site started to code the orders as fraudulent!! ‘[Men] were buying something that they liked, and they weren’t just buying one of it,’ said Katia Beauchamp, one of Birchbox’s co-founders. ‘The guys in our office were like, ‘No, no, no, that’s how we buy soap.'”
“Though Birchbox’s case study may err on the extreme, it’s just one of a flurry of ways in which men approach shopping differently than women. For a more basic understanding, next time you’re at the mall, take a quick scan of your fellow shoppers.”
Sovit Khurana is available on Slideshare.
Online Shopping Behavior of Consumers by Preeti Singh1 and Radha Kashyap2 (a study of 200 experienced online shoppers) for International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology:
“The study results indicate that females had positive attitudes to purchase online apparel as compared to males. Further results shows that working females had more inclined towards online shopping as compared to working males. The results also show that respondents of the younger age group between 20-30 years, both males and females, purchased apparel online as compare to males and females of 30-40 years, 40-50 years, and 50 & above. The study further indicates that higher-income groups of females were more inclined towards frequent online purchases as compared to male counterparts.”
Portrait of an Online Shopper: Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior by Farshad Kooti, Kristina Lerman, Luca Maria Aiello, Mihajlo Grbovic, Nemanja Djuric, and Vladan Radosavljevic for ACM:
“We find that a higher fraction of women make online purchases compared to men; but men make slightly more purchases per person. Men and women also purchase different types of products online. Even though the ranking of the top products is the same for men and women, each product accounts for different fraction of all purchases within the same gender. With respect to the age, spending ability increases as people get older, peaking among the population between ages 30 to 50 and declining afterwards. The same pattern holds for number of purchases made, average item price, and total money spent.”
When I started reading this article, it surprised me to read that so many people shop on their mobile devices. Most people I know, including myself, shop online (computer). I guess with the advancements in technology and apps, this has been made easier. It was later interesting to read the article break it down by gender. The statistic, “completed a purchase on a mobile device in the last month, 66.5% are women and 33.5% are men.” The factors that affect this also intrigued me, for example, that “27% of women and 20% of men say coupons influence their purchasing decisions” and how women research products and merchandise more then men.