The New Male Power Shoppers

Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, men are shopping both online and in-stores at higher rates than women. As discovered in First Insight’s latest consumer survey, The Rise of the New Male Power Shopper, men are bucking long-believed trends surrounding shopping habits. Men are more frequently shopping across all major channels both online and in-store, and are catching up to women in terms of making purchases from mobile phones.

Retailers and marketers should take note of these surprising results. This contradiction of age-old gender stereotypes may have major implications in the retail industry, where understanding the target audience and how technology is integrated into retail is key. It’s crucial to properly target and reach men, who are now being acknowledged as 2019’s power shoppers, through product selection, pricing and promotions.

The study, which compared the results of two separate surveys based on comparable samples of 1,000 respondents in December 2017 and September 2018, sought to understand gender shopping habits, purchase behavior and influences on purchase decisions. Shockingly to many, men’s demonstrable increase in shopping frequency was consistent over a variety of categories.

Men Are Taking the Lead – From Amazon to Walmart

The report notably found that men more frequently shop online, including at Amazon.com, compared to women, with forecasts that their shopping on Amazon will continue to increase. This fits some traditional understanding surrounding men’s proclivity for quick, convenient and practical shopping as opposed to more leisurely browsing. Specifically, 53 percent of men reported shopping on Amazon six or more times per month compared to only 46 percent of women. First Insight also found that men are more likely than women to shop six or more times a month across most traditional retail channels, including mass department stores, specialty stores, luxury stores, off-price stores, and even Walmart. At traditional retailers, 25 percent of men compared to only 15 percent of women reported this high frequency of shopping.

Adopt and Optimize Shopping Technologies – While Understanding Their Applications

As retailers continue to plan the rest of 2019, it will be critical to not only consider how men are actually shopping today, but what leads them to finally checking out with their (hopefully full) shopping carts. Tellingly, men are using technology for shopping and research at a higher rate than their female counterparts. This includes a major spike in use of smart speakers, which are overwhelmingly leveraged for researching product prices, and whose adoption has increased among men while remaining constant among women between the two studies. Ownership of smart speakers, a category which includes Amazon Echo/Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomePod, showed a 75 percent relative increase year-over-year. However, broken down by gender, men experienced a 113 percent increase in ownership (47 percent compared to 22 percent in the previous year), while women only had a 36 percent increase in ownership (36 percent compared to 26 percent in the previous year).

Men Are Participating in the Entire Shopping Journey

Widely available technologies are seeing different uses by men and women, and their habits are making this clear. For instance, a higher percentage of men than women reported that they look on Amazon first before looking or buying from another retailer. In the most recent survey, 69 percent of men reported checking Amazon first, compared to 54 percent the previous year. In comparison, women’s rates of checking Amazon first fell slightly, from 66 percent to 63 percent. And men have finally caught up to women in one key trend for retailers and marketers: mobile shopping. The rate of men who reported “never” or less than monthly making mobile purchases has dropped significantly from last year, and has nearly reached the percentage of women who reported the same.

It’s clear that the gender divide not only closed quickly regarding shopping habits, but also reversed in a way that flies counter to most conventional wisdom. The importance of this to retailers should not be underestimated. With men researching products and prices online before making purchases, product selection, pricing, targeted marketing and even promotion need to be evaluated. Men’s interest in shopping across all categories should inspire retailers to not only survive but learn to thrive and develop more customer centricity, adapting to the wants and needs of their customers.

Greg Petro is founder and CEO of First Insight, a technology company transforming how leading retailers make product investment and pricing decisions.