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SUMMARY:
Last week we discussed the results of the MarketingSherpa Consumer Purchase Preference Survey, showing the ways customers want to learn about new products they would like to buy. This week we examine the demographic differences in consumers’ preferences. Read on to discover how male and female millennials and baby boomers prefer to find out about new products. |
by Dr. Liva LaMontagne , Editorial Research Manager
As you may already know if you follow Chart of the Week, we have conducted two surveys — a marketer and a consumer survey — looking to compare what consumers say they want and what marketers actually do, to help us build content for the upcoming MarketingSherpa Summit.
In the previous Chart of the Week we discussed data from our consumer survey that explored why customers follow brands on social media. This week we take a deeper look at those results to learn how motivations to follow brands on social media differ by age, gender, region and other demographic characteristics.
MarketingSherpa commissioned an online survey that was fielded August 20-24, 2015 with a representative sample of U.S. consumers.
We asked consumers, "In which of the following ways, if any, do you learn about new products you would like to purchase? Please select all that apply," and looked at demographic differences in their preferences. We looked at millennials, defined as 18- to 34-year-olds, and baby boomers, defined as 65 and older, by gender. In addition, we explored preferences by income and presence of children in the household.
Click here to see a printable version of this chart
Overall, women (64%) favored in-store browsing for discovering products they would like to buy more than men (54%). Women also favored offline advertising (29%) more than men (25%).
When we look at the age breakdown, more millennial women (40%) preferred to learn about new products from social media accounts of their friends, family or colleagues than men and older women. Millennial women (35%) also preferred to learn from customer reviews on the company’s site more than men and older women.
Millennial men (41%) preferred to learn about new products they would like to buy through online advertising more than women and older men.
Baby boomer women (65%) preferred to learn about new products through in-store browsing more than men and younger women. They also preferred articles in print magazines/newspapers (51%) more than men and younger women.
Twice as many baby boomer men (48%) preferred to learn about new products from articles in print magazines/newspapers than Millennial men (21%).
People with incomes 75k to 99.9k (66%) preferred in-store browsing more than people with incomes less than 50k (57%).
People with incomes 50k to 74.9k (31%) preferred to learn about new products through customer reviews on the company’s site more than people with incomes 75k to 99.9k (22%).
People with children in their households (33%) preferred more to learn about new products through online advertising than people without children (25%).
However people without children in their households (30%) favored offline advertising more than people who had children (22%). They also favored articles in print magazines/newspapers (38%) more than people who had children (27%).
To sum up, millennial women prefer to learn about new products they would potentially like to buy from social media accounts of their friends and customer reviews on company websites. Millennial men, on the other hand, favor online advertising. Baby boomer women and men prefer in-store browsing and articles in print magazines/newspapers.
People with lower incomes are less inclined toward in-store browsing. People who have children prefer online advertising, while childless households favor offline advertising and print articles.
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Marketing Research Chart: The most popular ways consumers discover new products
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MarketingSherpa Consumer Purchase Preference Survey
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