When Men And Women Go Shopping
Men, who have often been accused of being merely replacement shoppers, tend to be more utilitarian when they hit the malls and shopping centers. It’s a mission. Get in. Get what’s needed. Get out. Quickly. Women, on the other hand, generally like to look around, talk to sales associates and experience the shopping. They walk around, smell perfume, touch clothes, dab on cosmetics.
Men are very task oriented while women are very much more about the relationship and the engagement and the interaction with the people at the stores. Women told surveyors that they liked it when associates showed them different styles and new items. This isn’t terribly surprising: Women run into more problems when shopping than men. On the tribulations scale, women’s No. 1 issue was not being able to find help when they needed it. One in three women who were so miffed by the issue that they said they would never go back to the store again. Men’s biggest headache: Parking. One in three said they hated not finding parking close to the store entrance.
Men ditch stores, too, but their biggest reason to do so is when products are out of stock. Men complained they experienced that when shopping 24% of the time compared with it happening to women 21% of the time.
Age made a difference, too, in shopper loyalty. The younger the shopper, the more likely he or she was to pooh-pooh a store for poor service. The pickiest of all groups were men 18 years old to 35 years old.
Women and men both are four times more likely to relay a good-news experience than a bad one. Still, when all is said and done, women are the shopping queens. They spend an eye-popping $4 trillion annually, which accounts for 83% of U.S. consumer spending
