Online Shopping Gets Social

Today’s eMarketer newsletter reminded me that I had intended to follow up some recent articles on social shopping. As so often happens, I found more than I expected. Start with the chart from eMarketer which compares the information sharing behavior of Gen X women (born 1960 to late 1970s) to those of Gen Y females (born late 1970s to late 1980s; see a discussion of cohorts on Wikipedia, also search the various generations). Whatever the exact “gen” definition you use, the older segment is more likely to share by telephone or email; the younger ones are more likely to share online. Not a huge surprise, so I went onto look at some of the material that had recently floated through my inbox.

Most of what I found we already know; retailers have established a presence on the “big 4,” Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Twitter. A recent post suggested that the effort is worthwhile, but it’s admittedly hard to measure results. What I was interested in, though, was what retailers should do to encourage social shopping or sharing, however you want to characterize it. I focused on an article by Heidi Cohen in ClickZ. She lists 7 ways to exploit the social phenomenon. I’ll list just 2 that I found especially compelling:

1. Make your message consistent across platforms. . .ensure that it's integrated with the rest of your marketing, both online and off. Consistency is key to having a believable and trusted brand!
2. Make attractive offers to social shoppers. They like them and pass them on!

I kept reading and found a comment by Keith Wiley of DecisionStep, a company I had not heard of. So I checked out his tool for social shopping, called ShopTogether. It looks like fun; more important, it looks like something women would do. I, for example, can visualize shopping with my daughter for presents for my grandsons using this tool. Check out their video. You can try the tool on Mattel’s ecommerce site.



Also think about how I found this social shopping tool. Someone from DecisionStep made a comment on the ClickZ article that led me to the site. The site had good content, and a blog post happened.

Food for thought for retailers; the rest of us can just go shopping!

What Are Older People Doing on Twitter?

Last week when I wrote (again) about older women on Facebook, Ailsa Leadbetter was kind enough to point out that comScore had new data about the age of Twitter users—thanks, Ailsa! In the meantime Marketing Charts was kind enough to do an article and chart on the subject, so I’m good to go.

Note that this post is titled “older people,” not “older women.” I can’t find any data. Twitter has a stats page on their blog, but they seem to be focusing on traffic data, not any kind of audience profile. I did find an app that guesses gender from Tweet contents, but I’m interested in data, not silly apps.

Again, I’m left to hypothesize. Here’s what I think is going on:

1.Twitter has taken the business (broadly defined: remember all the Congresspeople Twittering during President Obama’s speech?) world by storm. The data from HubSpot confirm that. It’s mostly web/desktop applications that are used for Twittering. There’s a good representation of mobile, but almost no fun stuff with pictures!

2.Many of the business Twitterers are male; a majority? I really don’t know, but somehow I guess “yes” by a small margin.

3.It doesn’t make much difference anyway. The Tweet stream is full of business messages of all kinds; gender is not relevant there.

Still, I’m curious. The comScore data comes from their panel, for which they have gender, so I hope we’ll see gender data at some point. The age data is certainly interesting.

Business/professional use of Twitter undoubtedly accounts for some of what we see in the age data. In my reply to Ailsa’s comment, I said that I probably gave less emphasis than I should have to the greater amount of time available to older people to try new technologies. That argument, however, applies better to the 55+ women on Facebook than it does to the most active, 45-54, age group on Twitter.

What should give us all pause is the comment from the comScore analyst quoted in the Marketing Charts article:

[comScore blogger Sarah] Radwanick concluded that current assumptions about who might use a technology first might need to be reconsidered. “Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the technologically inclined,” she said. “With those age 25 and older representing a much bigger segment of the population than the under 25 crowd, it might help explain why Twitter has expanded its reach so broadly so quickly over the past few months.”

Marketers take note! The nature of the technology early adopter may be changing before our very eyes!

What are Older Women Doing on Facebook?

The initial headline in February about the increasing activity of older women on Facebook caught my attention. At first glance, it surprised me, as it apparently did many of the other “social media experts.” In fact, looking at some of the blog entries in February, some commenters actually seemed to doubt the accuracy of the data.

Monday there was new data from Hitwise via Marketing Charts that confirmed the trend, which is at least continuing if not accelerating. Younger users are visiting Facebook less frequently; older are visiting it more. The growth is in the 35 and over age groups, with the 55 and over growing fastest. The press release also points out that while the traffic to MySpace is slowing, it still had the highest average time spent in February—an important metric—with 29 minutes and 38 seconds. That is a slight decline for MySpace over 1 year ago.

Since I’m a member of the older demographic, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the reasons for the trend on Facebook. I’ve been looking around since the February data came out, and I have a couple of solid hypothesis.

First, I should say that I’m not typical. I’m on the social networks because it’s what I do for a living. You learn by participating in this environment. Period. While my reason for being there is not typical, the results are. I’m in touch with former students all over the world; I’d have lost track of them without the social nets. I’m also in touch with younger friends and family members with whom I would rarely communicate in any other channel, including email. Point is, my reasons for being there aren’t typical, but the results I get from being there are.

I should also say that I believe the trend continues to be powered by women, although older men are clearly venturing onto social networks also.

So here are my two hypothesis:

1. Some women join Facebook and other social networks to keep up with young relatives and friends. I wouldn’t even be surprised if this was an “early adopter” reason.
2. The “early majority” adopters are hearing about sites like Facebook and deciding to try it for themselves. I’d love to know how many actually are invited by existing members; my guess is that a lot just invite themselves in order to try it out. When they do, they find that people they know are there. This must be ok!

In my early days on Facebook, the “People You May Know” were generally my former students, their friends, and my daughter’s friends—mostly 30-somethings. Now that has changed. Often it’s now people in my “older demographic.” And they tend to be women; women have historically been the communicators for their households.

This is another “the world is changing and marketers need to pay attention” moment. I saw a study by a site called Vibrant Nation, which is interesting itself. They coach their “older demographic” on why and how to participate. When I left I found a pop-under inviting me to sign up for their email newsletter. It’s a well-done site and does indeed look vibrant! What I went for was the results of a recent study. While it’s worth downloading, here are the essential findings:

KEY FINDINGS - The Vibrant Nation Woman: Networked and Wired
The VibrantNation.com study of 1,000 Boomer women with household income greater than $75,000 showed:
• The personal networks of women 50+ are large and growing.
• They are in personal contact with at least 46 people each month.
• 65% share information online with others in their network.
• They are comfortable relying on referrals from strangers online if the source is knowledgeable/experienced. They rely on references on websites like
Amazon.com (70%), Ebay.com (54%) and Tripadvisor (27%).

Need I point out that this is a very desirable target audience for many marketers?

Here’s a quote from CNN that pretty much sums it up:

"All of a sudden it seems the world is waking up to what we already know," says Carol Orsborn, a senior strategist for VibrantNation. "Women at midlife and beyond are early adopters [of technology], competitive with their kids, and in many cases, they are beating out their kids."

Don’t stereotype us older chicks! Personally, I’m off to charge up my portable electronics and hit the road!

Demographics and Internet Behavior

If you missed Peter Francese’s analysis of 2007 Census data yesterday in AdAge, you should read it in its entirety. His focus is on the impact on brands with little specific about Internet behavior. I recently reported on a survey by AARP that shed light on the Internet behavior of older Americans, and Marketing Charts followed a few days later with some good graphics. Today they have material from a Stores study of Boomers. Boomers are generally considered to have been born between 1946 and 1964. That means they are now 44 to 63 years of age.

Let’s mash some of the data together. Quoting Francese:

“The average U.S. head of household is now nearly 50 years old (49.5, to be precise). But here's the bigger story: More than 80% of the growth in the number of households in the next five years will be among those headed by people 55 and older.” In other words, the average head of household is a Boomer.

What does their media behavior look like, according to the Stores study and report in Marketing Charts:
Television:
•95% watch TV, with 77% of their viewing occurring between 7:30 pm and 11 pm.
•Two-thirds subscribe to cable TV and are most likely to watch Discovery Channel, A&E, the Food Network, ESPN and Fox News.
•They don’t like reality shows.
Radio:
•76% listen to the radio - more than any other demographic.
•49% listen to the radio during morning-drive time.
•Radio programming preference varies, from oldies to country to talk formats.
•6% subscribe to satellite radio.
Newspaper:
•57% read their local daily newspaper regularly.
•68% read their weekly community paper.
Internet:
•87% surf the internet, spending an average of 123 minutes online daily.
•93% regularly or occasionally use the internet to research products before they buy them.
•46% say online searches are triggered by traditional advertising or an article they’ve read; 45% are prompted by television or other broadcast media.

Add in the fact that Boomers have the highest discretionary income of any age cohort and that they are willing to buy online (eMarketer, April 10, 2008). The Internet is clearly a channel for reaching the ready-to-spend Boomer group.

Francese has a wonderful quote on their spending behavior relative to their children: “Households headed by people under 35 [born before 1973] account for only a little more than a fifth of consumer spending by themselves, but they cause vast spending by others on their weddings and babies. There really should be a separate category in the national GDP figures for competitive grandparenting by baby boomers.” Ouch! But it’s a natural; affluent Boomers spend on many things; spending on their grandchildren is one of the most enjoyable.

Marketers need to confront the fact that Boomers and Seniors are active on the Internet. They both acquire information and make purchases there. It seems to me there may be a difference when it comes to entertainment, though. It may be a reason for the non-linear behavior I pointed to a few days ago.

Most Boomers are still working. Their Internet behavior may be more instrumental—whether content on e-commerce is their intent. They need to accomplish things. Seniors are more likely not to be working, more likely to have time to browse the Internet. So their behavior may have more expressive components that that of Boomers. Think about it!