NEW YORK — For today's retailers and manufacturers, it has become increasingly complicated to pinpoint who are today's primary shoppers. Soccer moms? Working women? Men? In a new study commissioned by PLMA, GfK Custom Research North America answers the questions with some surprising results.
The study shows that, despite radical changes in society, women still dominate the retail marketplace. Although women's personal and professional advancements have grown significantly in recent decades, the time spent grocery shopping has not decreased.
According to the study, two-thirds of women say they still handle much of the grocery shopping and, furthermore, they still take the time to make the decisions with three quarters of them forming shopping lists and 53% taking time to clip coupons and search for specials. And 40% of women shoppers say they spend about an hour in the supermarket.
Women are also the rulers of the kitchen. Eighty-four percent of women still act as the sole preparer of meals in the household, with 61% of women stating they prepare meals at least five times per week. And the majority of these meals are not prepackaged meals that require a quick nuke in the microwave, 64% make most meals using fresh ingredients which generally take more time.
Aside from meal preparation and grocery shopping, women are also responsible for the other important household areas: Seven in ten women say cleaning the house is their job and three-fourths take on the majority of the laundry in the home. Since women are those making the purchases, they have become frequent store brand purchasers, with only three percent saying they never buy store brands.
The survey was conducted to assess the role the women play in household shopping and thus how marketing strategies would be impacted for U.S. retailers and store brand suppliers. The study included over 1,000 women who were pre-qualified as their household's primary shopper. The results of the study do show that for the majority of women their roles in the household have not changed in any significant way.
Source: Private Label Manufacturers Association
