Gender Differences in Buyer Behaviour

Gender Differences in Buyer Behaviour

Gender difference is the topic of today's blog. I'll be discussing what differences they are, if they're important, how they influence buyer behaviour and how they can be applied to marketing as well as commenting on the lecture.

In the lesson we were told to make a list throughout the lecture of the differences we could see (my list will be at the end of this blog post). We then discussed different ways to impress a women and came up with a long list including: compliment her, respect her, cuddle her, care for her, buy things for her and go to the ends of the earth for her; we then discussed how to impress a man and came up with 2 things: show up naked and bring food which, although humorous, highlights the fact that men and women are very different.

A new Japanese trend of serving sushi on women to provide for the male businessman.

We also looked at charity campaigns and discussed how men and women perceive the adverts differently. In our class from looking at the video below the females in our class were likely to donate to the campaign as they were affected emotionally quite strongly; whereas the males in our class felt less likely to donate as they did not feel they knew enough information and also that their £2 would not help the girl in a meaningful way.



We looked at research showing that men are more likely to take notice of the overall picture of things. In a research study a group of people were asked to remember various items. Men tended to remember the overall picture such as the location of the desk or bookshelf; women remembered more subtle items such as a vase of flowers or a picture of a family on the desk.

The above research can be evidenced in Direct Mail. Where adverts aimed towards women are more emotional; charities also write in an emotional style when fund-raising. Males tend to respond better to factual information: A study showed an 85% increase in response rate when emotional mail packs sent to men were changed to factual.



This can perhaps explain why Jason Cox and Helga Dittmar in 'the functions of clothes and clothing (dis)satisfaction: A gender analysis among British students' found that men are more self-oriented towards clothes; they use them as a symbol of their personality as a whole and the functional benefits they give. Women on the other hand use clothes as symbols of social and personal interrelatedness with others.

However, some men may act stereo-typically feminine or masculine, this is known as sex-typing, if they possess traits of both sexes then they are androgynous people. A person's sex-type may influence their perception of advertising. Women with strong masculine sex-types prefer ads portraying non-traditional women. Sex-typed people are more likely to alter their behaviour to adhere to their culture's norms.



This Nivea lotion is a good example of a product showing the need to be ambitious and successful. The advert shows 2 different men of different ages. Both having had long nights beforehand and getting ready for work the next day and using the product to help them start another day. They are both well dressed and professional-looking to give the impression that they are ambitious and successful.

In Western society men have agentic goals, which means they are both producers and consumers of the social system. This results in a tendency for self-assertion and mastery which can explain why male adverts focus on professionally successful and muscular males and also why there is a  tendency for products to be sex-typed, such as the Mach III razor. In this case the razor sounds 'technical' and suggests users of it have a technical mastery and hence masculine. Even though the advert isn't in English you can still see its message clearly.

This is also evident in research that shows people will choose an inferior product if it is named in a way to make it seem better e.g. X200 vs. X100.

Women tend to have more communal goals such as affiliation and and relationship building. This trait may appear more in adverts in the future as more women enter the marketing workplace.

Research by Brunel F & Nelson M (2003) showed that men and women differ in their recall of adverts by recency. It found men were more likely to remember adverts shown at the end of the break and women were likely to remember adverts at the start of the break. This piece of information can and is used effectively. I just reviewed the first and last ads during a break for channel 4's Shameless show and the first adverts two adverts of the break were for AA cover, in which a female was the central character dealing with AA cover for the home and the second was for the release of The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo on DVD. Both of these ads were targeted more towards females. At the end of the ad break was an advert for BT Vision which features a man fishing - clearly aimed towards men.

In addition to discovering what's in the table below we also found men are less likely to process complex metaphors, they'll just skip to the next ad. Whereas if a story or partial story is shown in an advert women will try to work out what's happening. Men also make decisions about products on impulse; even before they have read everything about a product they will have made up their mind. Women on the other hand are more likely to read all the details and then make a decision about a product.

One company that challenges the traditional advertising stereotypes is Dove, who very successfully implemented a introduced a range of adverts known as Dove Real Beauty which featured 'larger' (and more realistic) looking women and still showing them to be beautiful. They are now doing a similar thing with skin care, challenging the traditional macho-man style adverts and highlighting that men should be comfortable looking after themselves as they are their 'own man'.

Interestingly, the company behind Dove also owns the Lynx brand which released the advert below which has  a completely opposite message, basically saying that all that matters is how you smell. It should be noted that the Dove advert new for 2011 and the Lynx one is from 2009, which may indicate a trend in a more feminisation of advertising which targets more emotions.