Eric Brown disdains shopping. “It’s just not enjoyable to me,” said the 28-year-old Chicago CPA when Q caught up with him toting several shopping bags along Michigan Avenue. “When I’m out shopping, I basically know what I want to get. I rush in. I buy it. I get out.”
Conventional wisdom holds that guys hate to shop. Just ask generations of men. Ask academics and marketers who study such things.
Ask shopping guru Paco Underhill, whose new book, “Call of the Mall,” is studded with man versus shopping anecdotes, including this: The time men spent shopping for trousers “was roughly identical to what men devote to shopping for beer in convenience stores.”
If guys hate shopping so much, then why is mega-magazine publisher Conde Nast bringing Cargo, sibling to its popular shopping glossy Lucky, to newsstands on March 9? Why is Fairchild Publications prepping Vitals, another shopping mag for guys, for a September debut? There’s no easy answer, of course. But those who study shopping say a number of social, cultural and economic factors are challenging the “men hate to shop” notion.
For instance:
– Men’s definition of shopping is now open to interpretation. What guys call “research” can look suspiciously like shopping.
– Time-crunched modern life has put the burden of shopping on both men and women.
– An avalanche of products geared to men is demanding their attention.
“Regardless of social class, ethnicity, age–men say they hate to shop,” said Sharon Zukin, a City University of New York sociology professor and author of the book “Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture.”
“Yet when you ask them deeper questions, it turns out they like to shop. Men generally like to shop for books, music–both instruments and CDs–and hardware–both tools and high-tech hardware,” she added. “But if you ask them about the shopping they do for books or music, they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s not shopping. That’s research.'” This doesn’t surprise Cargo magazine’s editor in chief, Ariel Foxman.
Guys don’t generally think about “getting together with friends to grab lunch and chat over racks and shelves of cute, new merchandise,” he told Q, via e-mail.
“But if you define shopping, like many men do, as researching, experimenting with product, value-hunting, talking with friends about their own buying experiences and rewarding oneself by carefully spending hard-earned cash, [then] I believe that you’d find more men engaged in those sorts of activities than women.”
In other words–and with the caveat that there will be exceptions–what men and women call “buying things” and how they approach that task are different. Women will browse several 10,000-square-foot stores in search of the perfect party dress.
Men will browse 100 Internet sites in search of the perfect digital camcorder.
The competitive edge
Women see shopping as a social event. Men see it as a mission–as a game to be won.
“There is a maleness that is a competitive, aggressive type trait that does transfer over to shopping and we don’t see that in women as much,” said Mary Ann McGrath, a marketing professor at Loyola University Chicago’s Graduate School of Business who has studied gender differences and shopping behaviors.
“Men are frequently shopping to win,” she said. “They want to get the best deal. They want to get the best one, the last one and if they do that it makes them very happy.”
When women shop, “they’re doing it in ways that they want everybody to be happy,” added McGrath. “They’re kind of shopping for love.”
On one recent Saturday morning, Circuit City at Gurnee Mills had been open less than 30 minutes when Jim Stanislawski emerged from the store, toting several freshly purchased CDs.
Although he admits to the occasional in-store browse with his wife–“especially during the summertime if it’s real hot out”–the 43-year-old Gurnee resident’s shopping forays are usually more strategic.
“When I go shopping, I know exactly what I want and what store I want to go to,” said Stansilawski, an engineer involved in the manufacturing sector.
So which came first? Men’s lack of interest in shopping or the apparent lack of interest by some retailers in creating stores alluring to men?
According to Zukin, men did much of the shopping until the end of the 19th Century. In the middle of the 20th Century, when they became the principal wage earners of their family, they shifted the burden of shopping to their wives.
Some retailers responded by focusing store design on female shopping styles.
Women put together outfits and think about the context of a room, say, when choosing a sofa. A guy rarely thinks “outfits,” and to choose a sofa, he may flop on a couple before judging one a winner.
That may be changing. Men and women are both time-crunched, with less in-store browse-time available. For some men–particularly those under 40–their relationship with shopping and malls is different from their granddaddies’.
Childhood memories
“For many men under age 40, the mall is a real place. It’s the first place that many of them got dropped off from their suburban homes,” said the 52-year-old Underhill during a Chicago visit. “It was the first place that they weren’t under some form of direct supervision.”
And the over-40 crowd?
“They are replacement shoppers as opposed to grazing shoppers,” he said. “They’re going to places that are able to package the apparel goods that they want in an environment that they feel comfortable in.”
In fact, it is in apparel where a male-female dichotomy exists most clearly. Why, grumble some men, are all male clothes navy, gray, black or brown? But would they wear teal and peach?
These days, many guys live in a “uniform,” said Underhill, who authored the book “Why We Buy” and heads Envirosell, a New York-based consulting firm. “It’s been hard for them to get their arms around what it means to be somewhat fashion-conscious in the business sense. And therefore, it becomes much, much easier when you narrow your palette of choices.
“The men’s fashion industry’s most serious competition isn’t other people selling clothes, but it’s the Verizon wireless store and the Sony store down the street. It’s the pull on the pocketbook for technology,” he said. “It has pulled money out of what used to be spent on clothes. For many males, their PDAs, their phones, their iPods are fashion accessories.”
So what does the shopping/buying landscape look like for guys today?
“Exciting. And overwhelming,” Cargo’s Foxman said. “With more and more guys interested in buying things for themselves, their homes, their hobbies–and more and more consumer industries targeting men specifically and broadening their approach to men–you have a situation that is charged with curiosity, skepticism, enthusiasm, confusion and a handful of other mixed emotions.”
Plain English, please
Guys, he added, get “deflated by confusing jargon, uneducated salespeople and an endless conveyor belt of new products.”
Although one might hear such gripes from women, they have had years of coaching about shopping for clothing and grooming, etc., before they ever enter a store.
“American teenage girls learn to shop from their moms and older sisters, but they also learn to shop from scrutinizing articles in magazines like Seventeen,” Zukin said.
And although magazines such as GQ and Esquire have long had shopping elements, it’s MTV and VH1 that have caught the eye of young male shoppers, say Underhill and Zukin.
“Television shows are used by young men as the equivalent of Seventeen magazine or Lucky,” said Zukin, helping them making clothing and grooming choices, for example.
Of course, there are men who love to shop and are proud of it, McGrath said.
“They found that they developed a certain power if they can shop and talk knowledgeably about crystal and china. Otherwise, you have someone else living your life for you.”
Which is important whether one’s buying a car or a frying pan.
“All men love to buy but don’t want to get burned,” said Foxman.
Added McGrath, “There actually are men who are interested, for example, in cooking or shopping or crystal or things around the home–they become kind of chick magnets. Women like that.”
Just ask Mike Allen of Great Lakes Naval Station, who was headed into Gurnee Mills one recent Saturday. “I’m a fashion guy. I’ll go in there and buy me some clothes that look nice,” said Allen, 21, citing Abercrombie & Fitch and Express as favorites. “And a lot of girls like to see guys that like to shop. So I come here for the girls too.”
5 that annoy, 5 that would ensure joy
What irritates guys about shopping? Q asked Paco Underhill, who wrote the just-out “Call of the Mall” and “Why We Buy,” to tick off five things that tick guys off and five things they would love, if only someone would listen.
Here’s what he had to say:
5 things that bug guys
1. Lack of “interior parking.” We’re talking places to park your butt, not your car.
2. Having to wander the mazelike configuration of many malls in search of a particular store; and, once the store is located, wandering in search of merchandise.
3. Stores that put the small sizes on the highest shelves and extra-large on the lowest.
4. No grouping of clothing that goes together–can you say Garanimals?–which women’s stores do routinely.
5. Feeling like strangers in an unholy land when they wander into women’s departments, though women are comfortable shopping in men’s departments.
5 things that would help
1. Establish guy ‘hoods when it comes to shopping for grooming products such as shaving cream and razors. (Men and women have very different attitudes toward body hair.)
2. Educate men on style topics, like what constitutes a well-stocked closet.
3. Decode the language. For instance, if you can wear it to work and it’s not a suit, just call it business casual, not “casual sportswear.”
4. Explain why the $1,200 suit is better than the $500 number. Remember, if men understand why a wide-screen plasma HDTV is better than a 32-incher, they may pop for it.
5. Make shopping for gifts easier. Wrap purchases and put them in a generic-looking shopping bag. Not pink.
–Judy Hevrdejs
