Commentary

Women Like Brands Online

Women be shoppin’, as Sinbad famously noted, but even when they’re not shopping they’re liking brands online, according to a new study by Influenster, a business-to-consumer product discovery site, which surveyed 11,111 female social media users (average age 27) about their online activities.  

According to Influenster, 94% of female social users polled said they interact with brands online, with 31% interacting with brands every day. Mobile dominated social engagement, with 90% of respondents interacting with brands’ social media presence via smartphones, while 53% interact via laptops.  

The most popular way of interacting with brands was simple “Likes,” with 95% of respondents liking brand posts, but a majority go further by commenting on brand posts. Women social media users are also fairly receptive to promoted posts, with 67% saying they were somewhat or very favorable to these paid marketing messages, provided they actually teach them something about the brand. Just 5% said they disliked promoted posts for being “spammy.”

Asked which social platforms they preferred to engage with brands, 81% of respondents use Instagram, 79% use Facebook, and 56% use Pinterest; these proportions indicate that many women are using multiple social platforms to engage with brands. In terms of the types of content they interact with, 93% of women social media users like photo posts, compared to 58% for posts containing video.

The use of multiple, overlapping social platforms is confirmed by data from separate studies. Earlier this year a study by GlobalWebIndex found that online adults have 6.3 social media accounts on average, but only use 3.5 of these regularly. The survey also revealed that social media has become virtually universal, as 93% of online adults have at least one social media account, while 79% are actually active on at least one social platform.

1 comment about "Women Like Brands Online".
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  1. Larry Wiken from WIKEN INT"L, June 9, 2016 at 11:04 a.m.

    94% of female social users polled said they interact with brands online... ok, but.
    Can you breakdown 'social users' by segment. and what % of total female shoppers are social?

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