Social Shopping Trends Buck Gender and Age Stereotypes

“One surprising and clear pattern across the data is how much men are engaging with brands digitally,” Maguire said. Men are more likely than women to follow brand accounts, engage with influencers, and buy things impulsively, he said, including in categories “traditionally associated with women, like beauty products.”

Men were also more likely to report buying something immediately after seeing a digital ad for it. Nearly half (46%) of women said they couldn’t remember ever doing this, compared to only 30% of men.

It’s not young vs. old—it’s digitally native vs. not

Generational cohorts can be instructive for marketers, but it’s not all clearcut.

“I expected generational habits to supersede category habits when shopping online, but the data shows you have to take both together to get the strategy right,” Maguire said.

Millennial and Gen Z shoppers are most likely to make “almost daily” online purchases, the data showed, compared to 11% and 4% for Gen X and Boomers, respectively.

Still, Gen X is a tough generation to summarize. Some of their shopping habits skew closer to Boomers, while others are more similar to Millennials. That’s likely due to a split between those who were introduced to the internet before adulthood, like Millennials, versus those who had to learn to adapt later, like Boomers, the report theorizes.