More Men Invade Grocery Store Aisles

On November 18, 2009

The word “invade” may be a bit strong, but grocery stores are seeing a new type of consumer in their aisles. The proportion of male principal shoppers has significantly increased since 1996 by 21.6 percent. As of 2009, men now account for 30.4 percent of all principal shoppers (i.e. the primary person who shops for the household) in grocery stores.

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Although women still make up the majority of principal shoppers, it makes increasingly more sense to target the male grocery shopper. Of course, marketers will have to tailor their approach to meet the specific grocery shopping preferences of men or risk missing the mark on this emerging consumer segment. To help shape their strategy, research suggests some key differences between male and female principal shoppers.

Smaller Window of Opportunity
Marketers have a smaller window of opportunity with men because male shopping carts are 33 percent more likely to contain less than $60 of groceries in an average week than women. Men will also be spending this money closer to home as they prefer the nearest store, whereas women are 32 percent more likely to drive over six miles to a grocery store that they frequent. Men are also 12 percent less likely than women to make multiple trips the store per week, giving marketers fewer purchasing events with which to work.

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Men Shop for Smaller Households
Household size is also an important gender consideration. In fact, since men are 82 percent more likely than women to buy groceries only for themselves, it might appear that shopping preferences and behaviors are driven more by the number of people a principal shopper is buying for than by gender. However, a closer look at the data suggests that the differences are, indeed, gender-specific. Men who are purchasing for more people than just themselves are still more likely to have a smaller cart than women buying for a comparable household size.

More Impulse Buying
Data suggests that male principal shoppers are more vulnerable to the impulse purchase than women. Although the majority of men (64 percent) sometimes or always prepare a shopping list, they are 81 percent more likely than women never to have a list. They are also 37 percent more likely than their female counterparts to spend more than $100 in the past 30 days at convenience stores. This includes a variety of items such as breakfast and lunch sandwiches, coffee and, of course, beer.

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At the end of the day, these data points from MRI Doublebase suggest that marketing efforts must be extremely targeted, timely and relevant to reach the male principal shopper. Using a cross-channel media campaign can also help reach this emerging segment and, ultimately, drive business results.