The shopping trends of men versus women are changing. Now more than ever, men are doing more shopping. According to a survey performed by FirstInsight, “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.”
So, what does this information mean for you?
Know Your Customer
As a kiosk owner, knowing your customers and their spending habits creates leverage for you when determining your available products, product displays, and marketing. Since the male shopper is on the rise, catering to their shopping experience would be beneficial to sales.
If your kiosk cart sells mostly women’s apparel, then you may want to expand and add men’s products. You want your cart to visually appeal to the people whether they are male or female. Discover the motives of your shoppers. A man may be shopping for a gift for his wife. Displays that attract this type of customer would be advantageous and add another dimension of possible sales for your kiosk business.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
They say men and women have fundamental psychological differences. An extensive study was done in 1998 regarding the difference between female and male psychological mindset. According to “Two minds The Cognitive differences between men and women”, an article from Stanford Medicine by Bruce Goldman, “neuroscience literature shows that the human brain is a sex-typed organ with distinct anatomical differences in neural structures and accompanying physiological differences in function, says UC-Irvine professor of neurobiology and behavior Larry Cahill, PhD. Brain-imaging studies indicate that these differences extend well beyond the strictly reproductive domain. Adjusted for total brain size (men’s are bigger), a woman’s hippocampus, critical to learning and memorization, is larger than a man’s and works differently. Conversely, a man’s amygdala, associated with the experiencing of emotions and the recollection of such experiences, is bigger than a woman’s. It, too, works differently, as Cahill’s research has demonstrated.
Now let’s investigate the psychological differences between female and male shoppers. According to ScienceDirect, there are two types of motives for retail shopping, “hedonic and utilitarian”. Hedonic shoppers’ shop for the pleasurable sensation of shopping. For the most part, women are hedonic shoppers. Utilitarian shoppers’ shop for useful practical items rather than attractive. Generally, men are utilitarian shoppers. Of course, there will always be the few people who do not fit into these stereotypes but for the general public, this remains true.
So, what can you do with these statistics?
It’s All in the Features
By understanding the different motives behind your customer’s shopping habits, you can cut out the guesswork and market directly to your leading customers, and a modern POS system can help.
Whether you are targeting your hedonic shopper or your utilitarian shopper, using a POS system can help when deciding which products are selling and what customers are buying those products. Some POS systems offer remarketing tools and have built-in Customer Relations Management. With this feature, you can increase sales by building repeat business.
Once your customers are organized in your system, email campaigns targeting your dominant buyers will further increase the likelihood of repeat customers. For instance, if you are building an email targeted at middle age women you could promote your retail products that are trending for middle age women that season. The same goes for men. Being mindful of your message will help with your sales conversions. By crafting your message with a specific purpose, you will lure shoppers to your kiosk before they are even in the vicinity of your cart.
With a POS system that features good accounting your ability to manage, analyze and understand every aspect of your customers will be a piece of cake. A proper POS system will allow you to create multiple reports, so you know what sells where and when.
Having control of your operations management will greatly benefit the efficiency and profit of your kiosk. Once you have evaluated what is trending this season and your kiosk is stocked with the hottest merchandise, your POS system can help generate automatic inventory reports & send notifications on items that you are running low on, thus keeping you fully stocked with items ready to move.
Now, not all POS systems offer these important features, but if you are looking for one that does, look no further than Nova! Nova is the point of sale system you need to run your retail business – designed by retailers, for retailers!
Resources:
- https://www.moneycrashers.com/men-vs-women-shopping-habits-buying-decisions/
- https://www.guided-selling.org/women-vs-men-gender-differences-in-purchase-decision-making/
- https://wwd.com/business-news/business-features/first-insight-report-1202979412/
- https://www.firstinsight.com/the-rise-of-the-new-male-power-shopper
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435901000562
- https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
