Men Hunt, Women Gather
You know it’s really true when you read it in a Dave Barry column. In yesterday’s, “Man’s new hunting ground: The mall,” Dave admits that men still see going to the store as a prehistoric experience – where primitive man goes into the wild to locate his objective, “usually a large wad of meat in the form of a, say, a yak.” A man would then “make the purchase by whomping the yak on the head with a club.” He goes on to describe the standard guy’s shopping method: “in a bold, decisive, lightning-quick stroke. You’re in: you’re out; you’re done!” (and, he notes – he’s talking about shopping here.) In contrast, his wife “routinely takes astoundingly long periods of time to accomplish, essentially nothing.”
Paco Underhill mentions the same scenario in his book Why We Buy but then goes on to note that online, these characteristics seem to switch. “Men spend lots of time surfing from site to site while women go directly to their destination, click only enough to buy what they want and then log off.”
As I noted in my post from a few days ago, Rather Not Shop?, , it seems that more women are taking their online habits offline – and making more surgical shopping strikes even when physically in their local retail stores.
Dave Barry is spot on about men shopping as hunters. And, I think the hunter’s ways are rubbing off a bit on women these days. Certainly, women have to make “gathering” trips more of a special occasion.
Still, no matter how strategic women get about shopping, the experience will likely always matter more for us than it does for men. As Lisa and I wrote in Don’t Think Pink, “…women demand more than men from the promise of a product or service, including the complete shopping experience surrounding the buy.”
Here’s the deal: Women’s version of hunting, online and off, will always, always involve elements of our gathering origins. It is how we are wired. Perhaps you can learn a little something from your wife, Dave?
