We’ve all heard about the stereotype, “You send a man to the grocery store for diapers and he comes back with a six pack.” However, after looking into the behavior of male shoppers in our study, “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus…Or Maybe Not?” SymphonyIRI concluded that the way men shop is really not all that different from the way women do.
Most studies into shopper behavior dissect shoppers by income, race and/or geographic location, but there was still little data about how men stacked up against women in the supermarket aisles.
Families used to depend on men to go hunting and bring back enough meat to sustain everyone, but sometime between then and now, a paradigm shift has occurred, and women were expected to manage all aspects of the household, including food shopping and preparation. Now, it appears that the paradigm is shifting again. Today, an increasing number of men are at least partly responsible for shopping, either because they work or stay at home, or are half of a two-income household where shopping responsibilities are split.
Of course, every person, man or woman, shops differently. Some make lists, some clip coupons, and others wait until they get to the store to decide what they’re having for dinner tonight. But based on this study, we can conclude that men aren’t always in the last category and women aren’t always in the first.
Consumers are telling us that, when it comes to grocery shopping, men and women are not as different as we may think. Like women, men are making lists before heading out to shop, are sensitive to price, look at store circulars, stock up when they see sales, and shop at stores that offer better deals for the items on their lists.
In other words, men might be from Mars and women from Venus, but Martians and Venusians are both approaching the grocery aisles with an eye to saving money. And, their approach to saving is similar in many ways.
