Future of retail and loyalty programmes: gender differences
Men and women differ in the way they interact with retailers, the way they view loyalty programmes and the rewards they want to receive. Comarch’s Future of Retail survey showed that women in the UK prefer to receive real-time personalised offers while shopping in store, 61% compared to only 47% of men. In contrast, men are more receptive to personalised offers when they are near to a store, 42% vs 26% of women who wanted to receive offers on their smartphones this way.
There are other differences highlighted in the use of smartphones while shopping. Most notably that men would like to use in-store navigation on their mobile to help them find a desired product instead of browsing, 54% compared to only 36% of women that would use this feature.
Loyalty programmes
When it comes to retail loyalty programmes almost nine in ten women (86%) are members of at least one, compared to seven in ten (71%) men. Slightly more men (55%) than women (50%) prefer to communicate about their loyalty programme online, whereas more women (29%) prefer to do it at a counter in the store than men (22%).
Similarly, there are differences in the way men and women want to receive coupons/rewards. Women most prefer to receive them via snail mail/post (42%) compared to via email to use digitally (27%). However, men are equally likely to want to receive them via the post and via email (37%).
Lauren Hogg, UK Marketing Manager, Comarch said, “When designing a loyalty programme there are many factors that retailers need to consider, but they all need to start with the customer. How customers want to interact, what rewards are important to them and their demographics are crucial to building a programme that will deliver true loyalty. As our research shows men and women respond very differently to such schemes and therefore retailers need to bear in mind who their target audience is.”
What makes a programme attractive?
Just as men and women want to interact differently with retailers, they also respond differently in terms of what they want from a loyalty programme. Fifty-five per cent of women find offers and promotions to be quite important, compared to 41% of men. Similarly, women are more interested in the quality and quantity of the rewards shop (45%) and the possibility of collecting points (57%) when deciding if a loyalty programme is attractive compared to men (36% and 41% respectively).
Men (36%) find digital achievements and games more important in a loyalty programme than women (23%). However, both men (51%) and women (54%) want advantages such as previews and pre-selling of products, and also to be a part of the brands product development, 46% and 49% respectively. The research shows that while points and rewards are important, so is the need to be a part of the brands development through being able to give feedback on products in the development phase.
The research was conducted by Kantar TNS for Comarch. Interviews were conducted across six countries; UK, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland. Of the 3,029 interviews that took place, 502 were in the UK.
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