SHOPPING! IT’S A WOMAN THING!
It is so common to see that men get out seconds after they get into any shopping plaza or mall and keep waiting outside for their wives long after they have done with their purchases, while women are found still shopping unable to decide anything at all. Almost every woman you find is quite happy when they are on a shopping spree. They love to spend long hours on pursuing the racks and trudging around shops, and yet are unable to decide on what to get and what not to get for themselves, while their partners go tired and bored and sometimes even get hungry. Women have insatiable appetite for dresses, shoes, sarees, handbags and smaller and prettier little things. Infact they are the crazier lot who make most of the business going round. In my opinion the entire business industry would collapse if alone women were not so thoughtful. Women carry emotional weight to whatever they buy and no matter how much ever technology changes women are the best shoppers in the world and they influence almost 80% of all consumer products.
What is it that makes a woman more thoughtful of her purchases? There is an interesting evolutionary answer to that question. It is all in the genes. First of all, what men hate about shopping is spending lots of time choosing items to buy. Women usually either like it or don't find it so much annoying as men. The reason for those two types of reactions is that women for many ages were gathering herbs and fruits, and men were hunting. For a gatherer it is important to examine if fruit is ripe enough and not poisonous. Contrary, hunter has to react fast, or the beast will run away. So even if an iPod is not likely to run away from shelf, men still tend to make decisions to buy faster than women
Science has confirmed that women do multi-tasking and enjoy more of shopping than men. Caroline Winnett, chief marketing officer of Neuro Focus (a Calif. Based Neuroscience Company) said that the corpus callosum, the fibrous tissue connecting the brain's two hemispheres, has much more connectivity in women’s brains than in men’s. This has implications on designing shops that women visit and how to market to target customers. Women are too choosy and they take time to compare, evaluate and process information, while men are on a mission to get in and get out, she added.
Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan has propounded a new theory which could help marketers design better stores that cater to gender differences. "Women would want to have more things to search through and to be able to experience them, touch them, feel textures and see colors," Kruger said. "With a guy, he knows the properties he wants. It may be more efficient to have a counter that the guy walks up to, says what he wants, and they go get that item from a storage room."
Women are more obsessed and impulsive about shopping than men and they exhibit joy and pride in showing off their purchases. They navigate their way through any store to get what they really want, while men are more reluctant shoppers. An on-line study of the shopping habits of both the genders revealed that men predominantly look for more information while women scan through the product page and quickly go to the next product they want. They seek out for sales coupons and discounts.
Women find it exciting each time when something new is purchased. Though shopping involves much of money and as much of experience shopping is yet considered a woman thing. Women are buying on behalf of everyone in their lives, and as a result they are constantly considering the needs of others when they shop -- even when they are shopping for themselves.
There is no woman who has ever said “enough of all that shopping again.” I bet for a black belt in shopping. Would men go for it?