Men Buy – Women Shop

Have you ever considered the differences between men and women and their shopping habits? Or have you ever thought about how you acquire things in comparison how your husband, boy friend or father might? Well we are about to give you a little insight into how men and women shop in hopes that it helps you understand the differences between how Men Buy and Women Shop.

When shopping, women are more social and emotional about it their shopping trips. They circle around the experience with things like spraying perfume, trying items on, learning about the item, and engaging with the sales associate. On the other hand, men are on a mission. They want to get in and get out for that one needed item.

General marketing tactics reflect this and use this information to appeal to their target audience, Men or Women. Notice women’s stores are designed to draw the customer in they encourage them to spend time and relax there. They make the shopper experience it with things like perfume samples filling the air, music, chatty salespeople, many more amenities and information. Sometimes stores use sales techniques like friends and family promotions to make the experience more sharable. Women are known to be the gatherers, they want an educated sales person who is more exploratory and gets to know them and their needs. They want to be engaged.

Men’s stores are geared towards a more get in get out experience similar to primal hunting instincts. You’ll notice signage is different as well. Instead of images of people using items or modeling it like you might see in a women’s store, there are images of the product only. Men’s stores offer less variety, leading to more in and out efficiency similar to using an atm. A male shopper might complain about bad parking because he finds good parking to be more interesting. He’ll also prefers a sales associate who directs him to exactly what he is looking for and provides less interaction. A store might loose business from a male if something is out of stock because they are usually thinking of a short list of items they need. They are more likely to look elsewhere than waste their time looking for an alternative. If the same scenario would happen to a woman, she will branch out and find something else that is suitable.

Today woman are mostly the primary caregivers even though they are working outside the home more and more. Yet they are also the main shoppers, they have been groomed to be this way so they are naturally better at it. When tested on visual queuing like matching and differentiation of items, colors and patterns women are just stronger. Women have the ability to quickly count items or find small details that are inconsistent. They can also catalog things mentally better than men and those skills are needed to organize your brain to shop for items you and your family may need.

On the other hand, men are stronger spatially and have an easier time arranging things. They know they would like that complete set of drill bits and know they have the room so they rationalize the space for the items. They decide to complete the sets based on this ability to arrange. For men, it’s non-emotive. Women generally don’t think about where they will store the items they are purchasing, they attach a more emotional feeling to the items and instead they exclaim “I LOVE this sweater!” or “I love these dishes!” without fully thinking about where they will store them.

Men’s shopping ability and their interest in shopping has atrophied over the years and over generations because they haven’t been taught to be good shoppers. A personal example of this, my father never bought an item of clothing in his entire life, my mom bought him everything he wore and that was a generational thing for them, this continued on for my brother as well who is now a first generation shopper. These shoppers don’t trust themselves as shoppers they were not taught how to shop because they didn’t see their fathers do it.

I remember taking my brother to the Gap when he was probably a freshman in college, he went into the dressing room and tried on a pair of pants and when the sales associate asked how they fit and he said “well just stick your fingers in the waist and see.” He had no idea this wasn’t acceptable and the sales associate wasn’t going to assess fit like his mother had.