By Rieva Lesonsky
Keep this in mind as you prepare for the upcoming (and promising) holiday shopping season: Many of your customers are likely to be men. The Engage: Men blog from MediaPost recently pointed out that men are becoming “more engaged shoppers with a growing taste for luxury and fashion.”
The blog reports some interesting stats:
- Last year on Black Friday men spent 50 percent more at stores than women, and 100 percent more online. (via the National Retail Federation)
- Flash sale site GiltMan reports men spend 20 to 30 percent more than women. (via CNBC)
- 45 percent of affluent men (those making $100,000 and up) spend more than $4,000 a year shopping online, while 13 percent spend more than $30,000. (via iProspect)
One stat I found particularly interesting was that even though the users of Pinterest are overwhelmingly female (especially in the United States) Engage: Men cites a survey showing that men “are more than twice as likely to make a purchase” than women. And in a survey taken this past summer by Compete nearly 40 percent of men said they’d “bought something after discovering” it on Pinterest, compared to only 17 percent of women.
But, the blog reports, male shoppers expect “special” treatment. “They expect to be treated as significant … They want a masculine shopping environment with unique merchandise, displays and design that speaks to them.”
Finally, the blog says that men are spending more than women on luxuries, leading to an overall “recovery” in the luxury marketplace.
There’s more interesting information in the blog, so take a look and learn how you can target these new “big spenders.”
