NEW DELHI, August 31: The Internet gender gap may be fast disappearing, but differences in how men and women use technology still remain wide. Female consumers are catching up with their male counterparts in online media consumption, purchasing behaviour, and device ownership; but gender roles persist: men engage in financial activities, watch more television, and spend more online; women keep in touch and shop over the Net.
A just-released report from Forrester Research called "Men are from CNET, Women are from iVillage" identifies the divergence in men and women's behaviour online, as well as with other forms of media. This is the first document in the "Consumer Technology Profiles, 2005" series from Forrester Research. Data was compiled using Forrester's Consumer Technographics. It consisted of a Web-based survey of over 5,000 US and Canadian individuals.
Men may have been the leading technology adopters, but women have caught up. Despite the progress, though, data shows that gender affects the way people approach the Internet, other traditional media, and online shopping. The key factor driving these differences is that men are one-third more likely to be optimistic about technology than women: 56 per cent of men are tech optimists against 42 per cent of women, according to the report authored by Jim Nail in association with Sally M. Cohen.
Because of their dissimilar attitudes toward technology, men and women use the Net differently. Men gravitate toward the latest tech tools and financial activities, while women use their online connection to stay in touch with family and friends, and for practical household tasks, according to the report.
Male online consumers are at least 60 per cent more likely than women to track stocks, bonds, or mutual funds, and look up investment account balances. But while men still have the lead on researching products for purchase online, women are closing the gap. As online bargain-hunters, 35 per cent of online women research for free products or coupons, compared with only 25 per cent of online male consumers; and 22 per cent more women enter online sweepstakes.
More men adopt emerging Web technologies. They are at least 40 per cent more likely to maintain or read a blog and 100 per cent more likely to use RSS. In contrast, almost half of women send e-cards, 46 per cent more than their male counterparts. Women are also slightly more likely to use instant messaging and share photos via email. But men are more willing to fiddle with the technology – for example, they are one-third more likely to protect their PCs with ad-blocking software.
Male and female online consumers shop online equally – 52 per cent of both groups bought online in the past three months – but for different products. Women favour apparel, and health and beauty products; men tend toward consumer electronics, computer hardware, and software. These differences have a larger implication: On an average, men spend $200 more per year on their online purchases than women.
Men spend more time with every type of media and are more likely to visit almost any type of website than women. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but even in the rare areas where women’s media time is greater than men’s, the edge is small. On an average, men spend over 7 hours more per week than women on media activities. They devote an hour more in their consumption of radio and almost two hours more watching TV or using a PC.
Men out-surf women by more than 1 hour every week and are more active on almost every genre of websites: news, magazines, finance, job or career information, discussion boards, or comparison shopping. Women’s slight affinity for film information, games, photo sharing, and online phone directory sites cannot compare to their male counterparts’ fondness for the information and entertainment available on the Internet.
Publications and networks delivering content about the home, fashion, and family draw a female audience: Lifetime, HGTV, the shopping networks, Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, and Martha Stewart Living. Men favour national news publications, cable networks, and sports media brands, including USA Today, Comedy Central, Discovery, and ESPN. More women regularly read their local newspaper and watch network TV stations such as ABC, NBC, and CBS than their male counterparts.
© 2004, Forrester Research, Inc.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
