Women are still 3X more likely to consult family and friends than online

[Patrysha]

Women Share Opinions About Products Online, Offline : MarketingProfs (http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2010/4011/women-share-opinions-about-products-online-offline)

Interesting article on marketing profs about the way women share information about buying decisions in several categories...

[vangogh]

Interesting. I suppose it makes sense. This is obviously a very big generalization, but women are generally more likely to seek the advice of others than men are. It makes sense they would value the opinions of friends and family to a greater degree than men and seek those opinions out in greater degree.

One thing I found interesting, though it should have been obvious given the above is how women are using social networking sites to connect as part of their buying decision. Fits with the idea of them generally sharing advice more and certainly suggests how businesses mainly focused on products and services for women should spend more time with social sites.

[Patrysha]

It would also be interesting to find out the characteristics of the 9% who do write reviews and learn their factors of influence...a good referral program will take care of the face to face word of mouth, but creating an outreach program to capture the attention of reviewers could have wonderful results.

[KristineS]

I'm not surprised by this. Women are almost trained to take the feelings and opinions of others into account. Given that, it stands to reason they would discuss their purchases and share information.

[Patrysha]

For me it helps to have facts and data for back up...most small business owners are very conservative in their marketing.

[vangogh]

Oh yeah. Having data is good. We might have assumed this stuff anyway, but you know what happens when you assume. :)

[ADV007]

Hey Patrysha!

Thanks for passing this on! Very interesting!

One business that I worked with experienced an interesting trend when it came to who was calling/e-mailing requests to set an appointment with a representative.. They would experience a large amount of calls/e-mails from men on Monday's and Friday's.

Being curious about why so meny more men were taking action on these particular days we found out that about 90% were married and had families. We then found out that many of the wives were giving their husbands "to-do lists" over the weekend to be completed by weeks end and they would either get them done right away on Monday or (for the procrastinator's) on Friday.

We even centered a couple marketing campaigns to our married prospects around this concept and received good turnaround.

I just saw this post and it made me think of that. Thanks again for sharing, I appreciate it!

[vangogh]

We then found out that many of the wives were giving their husbands "to-do lists" over the weekend to be completed by weeks end and they would either get them done right away on Monday or (for the procrastinator's) on Friday.

That's interesting. It's easy to see how it would play out too and funny to think something like a to do list had so much impact on contacting the business in question.