There are countless businesses and brands out there that are all trying to target their advertising efforts at one demographic in particular; shoppers. However, a large chunk of shopping today does not take place in the stores and boutiques, but rather on the internet and from mobile devices. People have become well accustomed to the practice of handheld shopping, and mobile shopping is becoming increasingly available. The idea of most marketers targeting shoppers is that the best people to aim their efforts at are women, because traditionally and statistically, they have been the ones most interested in shopping. Well, in the case of mobile shopping, there is a new infographic that proves that the age-old traditions of shopping trends are taking a slight turn.

The infographic comes from uSamp, an online market research company, and it shows that for mobile shopping, the bulk of activity has been coming from men instead of women. The numbers included in the graphic come from a survey of 1100 men and women asked about their smartphone shopping habits. An outstanding fact is that of these 1100 men and women, only 34% of the women confessed to making a mobile purchase from their smartphones, while a total of 45% of men confessed to making a mobile purchase at some point. The highest results came when asking the panel of respondents whether they have ever scanned a barcode, with 85% of women and 91% of men confirming the action. Barcode and QR code scans have long been a way to market to shoppers, and apparently even with them, men were the majority. Of the six different categories of question, only one resulted in a higher percentage of results from women, which was the use of mobile coupons. Men seem to be taking advantage of all of the mobile shopping features available in the world much more often than women are.

The fact that men shop on mobile devices more than women is surprising. What is not surprising though is what kind of shopping they are doing. Men showed a higher result in shopping categories such as consumer electronics, entertainment and movie tickets, and most of all digital content. Women, as can be expected, were the majority in health and beauty. Of all the categories though, this is the only one where women had a higher percentage than men. Though the percentages may be close, it seems that men are doing the majority of the handheld shopping.

The majority of the men asked about their mobile shopping habits said that they do most of their shopping at work. It was the same for women, but only 15% of women said they shopped at work as opposed to the 25% of men.

Marketing to mobile shoppers on mobile devices is still a pretty new practice, but many marketers have decided to target their advertising toward women, seeing as they have always been the majority in the shopping community. The results in this infographic clearly prove otherwise, meaning that mobile marketers that are targeting shoppers should consider some more “male-friendly” advertising if they want to reach the mobile shopping community effectively.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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