Or, a more boring title, “The Significance of Marketing to Females Online.” (The original is more catchy, don’tcha think?)
I came across an interesting article on ChiefMarketer.com called, “E-commerce: Meet the New Boss.” Author Dave Friedman shares some interesting statistics about female online shoppers, drawing the conclusion that it’s important to understand women, what they want, how they operate, and then to market to them.
I thought the statistics cited in the article were interesting. Women place more importance on value over brand names, except when buying for themselves, it says. (If true, what does that say about us? We’re cheap when it comes to the husband and kids but we splurge on ourselves?) Women like to share information about shopping (no duh) — we’re more likely to forward emails, and 3 times more likely to tell others about our shopping experiences, good OR bad. (We like to talk, no big surprise there.) While there are more middle-aged women (35-54) that shop online than any other gender or age, younger women (25-34) have more discretionary income and spend more online (that’s because they’re less likely to have children).
So we like to talk, we like to shop, and we like to talk about shopping. We let people know about our good shopping experiences, but tick us off and, well, hell hath no fury…
The implication of all this? Online merchants, when designing their loyalty programs, and rewards programs of all types (online and off-), need to think like a woman. Find ways for us to communicate with one another, and work hard to be sure we can only say positive things about our shopping experiences. Women can be very, very loyal, but it doesn’t take much to tick us off and when it happens, it’s hard (if not impossible) to win us back. And give us good deals. We like those. 
