In an article I wrote recently, I described some recent findings that showed that marketing to men on Facebook was a much cheaper practice, and that better performance came from it. On that article, a certain commenter mentioned something about the reported results pointing to men being more inclined to purchase things on Facebook. Well, with Facebook being widely used on mobile devices these days that comment may make a lot of sense. I say this because of a recent reporting of information from eMarketer that describes the differences between men and women regarding how likely they are to make purchases on mobile devices.
According to findings by online market research company uSamp, about a third of men have purchased digital content via their mobile devices. Almost the same amount of men have purchased consumer electronics on mobile, and 23% have used the device to buy movie and event tickets.
However, women did not purchase quite as often in those categories on mobile devices. Instead of a third, only about 20% of women bought digital content. Also, instead of the 27% of men that purchased consumer electronics on their mobile devices, only 8% of women did. As for movie and event tickets, women were far behind the 23% of men, as only 11% of female respondents said that they had purchased tickets on their devices. The only category in which women did more mobile purchasing than men was, as you may have already guessed, health and beauty products.
However, that does not mean that women are not bringing in any sort of success for marketers;
 A mobile shopping study by digital ad agency Moosylvania also points to women as heavy mobile coupon users. According to their findings, 44% of female US smartphone users redeemed an online coupon via mobile in November 2011, compared to 34% of men.
EMarketer states that this same survey revealed that 32% of female mobile device users opted into receiving location-based mobile coupons while only 26% of men did. Offering deals and promotions on mobile platforms is quite a heavily used marketing strategy at present, and those marketers using this method should expect to rely heavily on women as their target.
Both uSamp and Moosylvania are saying that men are buying more on mobile devices than women. They are also both saying that it is the female mobile device users that are grabbing hold of all of the offers, coupons, and promotions put forth on mobile devices. To me, these results point to the simple fact that women prefer to do their shopping offline, while men prefer to shop quickly and easily by using their mobile devices. Put that way, it makes sense. Women love to shop, and doing it the easy way would probably take all the fun out of it. However, if you are a marketer who is looking for mobile commerce, then you are probably better off targeting your efforts toward men. For those who are looking for successful performance marketing through the use of coupons or deals, then female mobile users are your market.
