Customerland

Decoding Female Shopper Dynamics: Insights from the SheShops Report

• Mary Mathes, Ingrid Sierra • Season 2 • Episode 28

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In this episode of the Customerland Podcast, we explore the newly released SheShops Report, which sheds light on the significant influence of female consumers. We're joined by Ingrid Sierra, VP of Global Marketing at FinFare, and Mary Mathes, Director of Data Insights at Alpha Diver, who help us break down the key findings of this important study.

We discuss the origins and goals of the report, emphasizing the economic power of women and the need to understand their unique shopping behaviors. Our conversation delves into the psychological aspects behind women's purchasing decisions, viewed through four distinct lenses: functional, experiential, conformity-based, and instinctual. We also examine how these factors change across different age groups, from the emotionally driven youngest adults (18-21) to the more patterned behaviors of those aged 22-37.

Mary Mathes provides insights from Alpha Diver's extensive dataset, challenging traditional demographic categories and offering marketers actionable data that go beyond surface-level statistics. Additionally, we touch on ethical consumerism and sustainable marketing, exploring the "say-do gap" and its implications for brands striving to maintain authenticity.

This episode offers a thoughtful analysis of the SheShops Report and practical strategies for better understanding and engaging the female consumer demographic.

Mike Giambattista:

Today is a pretty big day in the life of Customerland Podcast, because we're talking about a project that the three of us on this conversation have been working on for several months. It's called the SheShops Report. By way of introduction, ingrid Sierra is CMO at FinFair Connect and Ingrid Sierra is CMO at FinFair Connect, but before she took that big job, she and I were kind of locked head together in producing this project, along with Mary Mathis, who is Director of Data Insights.

Mary Mathes:

Thank you At Alpha Diver, who was one of the primary contributors to the report no-transcript a moment and then I'm kind of the translator of what they find into a client facing story, into actionable insights for our partners, of our, our partners, of what, what does this tell us and how can we really activate against this information in meaningful ways, and also just a point of note that Mary was, um, I guess, point person, for lack of a better word on all of the work that we did together putting this together.

Mike Giambattista:

So there's that. And, ingrid, perhaps you can do a better job than I did on describing who you are and what FinFair is all about.

Ingrid Sierra:

Yeah, so, as you said, I now work for FinFair. We're a startup based in Southern California and I'm basically building the marketing function there, which is super exciting. But, as you said as well, before that and still a little bit now, we've been working together on the customer, more on a kind of strategic advisory point of view, and that's as part of that work that the C-Shops reports came about, and I'm super excited about it because we were obviously at the customer. Everything came about and and and I'm super excited about it because we were obviously at the customer. Everything is about like those insights and and and and being a little bit like ahead of of of trends and and and thinking through uh, behaviors and stuff.

Ingrid Sierra:

And we as a lot of things with female overall, like when you look at I don't don't know research on health and impact of medicine, and research on the human body, the female body, et cetera. The woman cohort is always a little bit behind the male cohort in a lot of things in the world, and it's actually the same with insights and those type of analytics. And it's actually the same with insights and those type of analytics. Also, as we'll unpick, women are growing in importance, a cohort of shoppers. So it was super exciting to unpick all of that and I mean, mary will have a lot to say about it.

Ingrid Sierra:

But really getting to a point where we break things down beyond the kind of now very stale life stage, demographic, that is not real anymore because, like I mean, I'm a 46 years old woman, I'm not married, I don't have kids. So clearly, if you, if you keep looking at life stages, you could be completely wrong in what you tell me. And by going more from a psychological phase in life, and and and not opinion, that is absolutely fascinating. So, and that's really one of the key things, the report is um is, is is getting out. So sorry, that was a little bit uh long.

Mike Giambattista:

No, no, no, no, that's good. That's good, I think, and it's a good segue into why we decided to to put this whole thing together in the first place because, um, you know, little disclaimer here, I'm a guy and um you know, trying to answer the millennial old question of, like you know, understanding women is is a bit of a challenge for my gender.

Mike Giambattista:

But for marketers, as you were saying, there has almost been a resistance, if you will, to examining that cohort in a way that is different from the way they look at men. And clearly we are different in so many ways. And I remember the early conversations Ingrid and I had on this, which were based on some, I think a couple of statistics flew across our desk and we thought, oh, this is really unusual how the female contingent isn't really even acknowledged here and yet the purchasing power, the economic control they have, you have, is massive. So why aren't people looking at this like a little bit more specifically through a female lens? Was was my understanding, but when we brought this whole idea to our research partners, you know, Mary seemed to be, uh, very on board, uh, very quickly, Um, and I want to put words in your mouth, but you know, perhaps you know from an alpha diver standpoint why did you guys decide to join the effort?

Mary Mathes:

I think for us we've been in the last couple of years in particular. We've really been taking a growing interest in this growing database that we have. We've been measuring these drivers and barriers of consumer behavior for really going back to 2018. So we've got this really nice, rich, robust data set now and the ability to look at trends over time, to say, to look at a cohort of okay, women across, you know every, from 18 up to 75, we have, you know, all of this data, and I mean not, you know, not for every project, but where we're pulsing the population often enough at that gen pop level, where we can really start to say, like, what do we see going on? What is driving behavior at that broader level, and looking at the different ways we can slice and dice it into different groups of interest. You know, women versus men, the traditional, the traditional definitions of the generations, versus looking at it a little bit more granularly and saying, like, you know, what's really? What I think was really cool about what we were able to do here is, you know, and as we'll get into when we start talking about these groups that we found we didn't just rely on the traditional generational groupings. We let the data show us these are the age breaks at which there is a meaningful change in the psychology of the shopper and these ages kind of go together and there's a common driver that comes to the fore for them and then in this age group it switches to something else and then here it switches again and it doesn't nicely totally cleanly follow what we typically think of as generations and being able to really look at that in a more meaningful way and derive more informed insights. So, as Ingrid was saying, it's not just about making these assumptions about life stage and assuming that everybody in that cohort is doing the same thing, but looking for these broader trends. Um, and you're looking at so looking at how these things have been changing over time really the last five years or so, noticing trends, kind of these macro forces, what, what drives and hinders behavior.

Mary Mathes:

And what's nice about the way that we do this is we've been measuring it at what we call your daily life level is like how are you going about your day? And we have that, this rich data set now and then we dig into it in our, in our context of interest for the given project or client. So that's the that frame is going to shift around. But we have this really robust data set now of as they go about their daily life as people. What are people like at?

Mary Mathes:

You know different ages and stages, you know different ethnicities across the genders, and really starting to build this nice data set that lets us it's almost like a little bit more anthropological study of, like what is going on in the aside, you know, and looking at it, absent any one particular client's objective or goal, obviously like we can really help to inform that as well. But for me, like I was particularly I thought it was interesting. It's like, what else can we do with this data? Like what are some of these things that we can just find as broader truths and bring forth? And I hope that this will be an ongoing partnership where we continue to pull out new findings about female consumers, for example. And then what other topics could we get into?

Mary Mathes:

Maybe do we look at, we start to look at different ethnic cohorts or these different age groups younger shoppers, older shoppers, et cetera.

Ingrid Sierra:

I think there's a lot of rich insight that we can continue to pull, and we're just getting started with this completely and it's so fascinating because when you take that kind of step back and that lens that you describe with like that more kind of psychological view. I mean when, when I look at those different phases and yes, it's linked to age, but it's not linked to uh, to, to, to where are in your life more, what's happening in like your way of thinking, etc. Everyone you know, regardless. If I look at my kind of sample of data from everyone I know everywhere, whatever you are, wherever you are into your personal journey, wherever you are into your personal journey, that kind of change of way of thinking happens because of the experience you actually accumulate in your life Later in life.

Ingrid Sierra:

For women it's that kind of like re-accessed freedom, post certain things, and it's almost, like, in a funny way, linked to like stages, with like how the female body works as well, and I think that's absolutely fascinating. And ultimately, I think if we were able to compare it to the male would be very interesting, because I really think there would be massive differences there. And so, um, and also depending on, I think, where where women live, because again, unfortunately we are not lucky as lucky in different parts of the world and I'm sure it massively impacts those psychological.

Mike Giambattista:

Completely yeah.

Ingrid Sierra:

So there's so much more to unpick that is very freeing from all the cliches of, like, the female life stages and, yeah, I'm so excited to kind of explore how much more we can do with that.

Mike Giambattista:

You know, to be honest, the way Alpha Diver delivered your insights was one we didn't really know what to expect when we put this out there to you and a few other research partners saying this is what we're about, um, how, how can you contribute and what do you think you will be contributing. And what you came back with was this very new and unique look at uh, at at the values and the emotions that underpin female shoppers throughout these different life stages, and the fact that they had nothing to do with the traditional like demographic breakdowns of, you know, 18 to 35 or whatever it happens to be. You know, uh was. It was a surprise, and the way uh alpha diver underpinned that thinking proved it out. And I've had I've had conversations with retailers about this report, kind of in a preview session, and, um, they're all very, very interested in the insights because, you know the they realized right off the bat that women are a huge uh component of their, of their buyership. They probably were less willing to admit that they didn't understand that buyer as well as they wanted to, but I think kind of all went. Yeah, I could, I could use a little help there, but when? When I started talking about the thebased if that's the right word way to kind of look at the way they operate. Everybody started to go oh yeah, that makes so much more sense to my marketing people who are talking about channels and messaging and you know, all this other stuff in a way that makes sense without kind of breaking their systems. And my response was well, you probably have to break the systems because those things just need to be rethought anyways. The other thing that's worth, interesting, worth talking about here, is, as I've spoken of this report to various people, and this report, by the way, it's, um, it's meant to be a high level ish overview um of, of, you know, of the overall understanding of how female shoppers work, uh, but there's been a fair degree of interest in breaking this down further along vertical lines. You know, uh, retailers have some very specific questions that I think we can answer in future editions. Um, automotive is a sector that's kind of popped up as as a possibility. Um, hospitality and travel are kind of going, you know, talk to us because we want to know this stuff. So I think there's there's, there's a, there's a big future here.

Mike Giambattista:

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Mike Giambattista:

I'd love to just spend some time here talking about the actual findings in this report, and both of you are intimate with the data, so I'm just going to let you both do the talking here. Sure, we've talked about the, the way, the, the kind of values based approach that we've, that we've looked at women shoppers. Let's discuss a little bit like what those cohorts really mean, because I think over time, as you said, ingrid, they do sort of align with certain age groups, but they're just not the typical age groups. So what are those values? Clusters, if that's you know. I'm making words up here.

Mary Mathes:

So, yeah, and I would modify that I think that's an interesting term to refer to as value-based. We're really talking about it. We would typically describe it, as you know, psychology-based. But you know, when we think about these four psychological lenses and these are all ways that we as humans have evolved to aid our decision making, the lens that you gravitate to as the one that works best for you to help you navigate the world um, yeah, because you I could see you kind of continuing that out to say that it does become indicative of, well, what do you value? What kind of information is useful to you in making decisions? What are you looking for? And we should probably talk about what these four are very briefly. So I mean, there's a very functional one, which is very rational thought. You have somebody that does want to see comparative data and look at the numbers and feel knowledgeable and make an informed choice. But there's also an experiential lens that is really more about continually discovering new things, having new experiences, building a portfolio of experiences that you draw on. You know that helps you think about what something's going to be like and what kind of an experience you want to have, and really, you know it's more of a sensorial way of navigating the world. There's a more conformity-based one, which maybe that sounds a bit like a dirty word, but it's the idea of, like you are valuing the input, the wisdom of your tribe. Like, what do people like me? What have we agreed on? Is the thing to do? What is the thing to do that is going to keep the members of my group, whose opinions I care about, happy, and I want to be make sure that I stay within the confines of that. That's a way of navigating. That's a way of navigating decision-making that comes to the fore for one of these groups. And then, lastly, there's a very instinctual, impulsive one. It's just like I'm going to follow my gut and go with what seems like the right thing to do, the thing that's going to feel good right now.

Mary Mathes:

All four of these are in play. You know, in some combination with all of these age groups that we're going to talk about. But we see, what we thought was really interesting is that we see at these different unique age breaks, what we thought was really interesting is that we see, at these different unique age breaks, there's one in particular where you see it really, oh, like they've really got that one in common, more so than the other three, and then it does change. So there's the first break that we found really was this youngest adult cohort, this 18 to 21 year old women, who are really defined by the fact that no one of those four in particular has fully come to the fore for them yet. They're operating from a mix of the conformity, the impulsive, instinctual, the experiential. They're still figuring out okay, what is gonna work for me, what is the way I'm gonna navigate the world? It's, you know, they're still figuring out okay, what, what is going to work for me, what is the way I'm going to navigate the world?

Mike Giambattista:

it's you know, they're still, they're confused they're.

Mary Mathes:

They're still making their way into adulthood, and you know they're going to figure that out as they continue, as they go and and one of these is really going to come to the fore for them but right now, what? What characterizes them is it's much more. They're much more the emotional ones than they are that very rational, functional. Give me the data, let me make an informed choice. It's these other three that are meaningful and we see that these three more emotional ones continue to be impactful through much of life. Then we move into the next cohort. We found that really shared a common one was 22 to 37. So when you think about traditional generation groupings, that's like older Gen Z and younger to middle cohort of millennials I mean the oldest millennials are turning 44 this year, so we're missing the top half of them.

Mary Mathes:

And when we do look at the generations in the more traditional breaks, we see that a lot too that younger millennials look a lot more like Gen Z and older millennials either are very much their own distinct group or have more in common with some elements of like Gen X. There's a I think Pew defines it anyway from 1980 to 1996 constitutes a millennial. That's a huge group. There's a lot of different formative experiences that you know, depending on which end of that spectrum you were born on.

Mike Giambattista:

So it doesn't surprise me that we found it didn't totally line up cleanly.

Mary Mathes:

But so 22 to 37, you know this, you know this is a big cohort. You know is much more than impulsive, instinctual drive actually.

Mary Mathes:

And it makes sense when you think about it. You're building your career, you're making your way in the world, you're building your family. You've got a lot going on. There's a lot of pressure, you're feeling ambitious, you're looking to move up. What can I do that helps me feel like I'm on top of things, like I'm. You know, I'm making some quick wins, I'm making some moves. I, you know I look like I've got it together to my peer group and all of that. You know this is a, you know this is a more diverse group. You're starting to earn some money. You know, maybe you know family and other people are coming into it.

Mary Mathes:

There's a lot going on with this cohort and you know there's stress happening and that you're going to that more instinctual. How do I get through this in the way that you know that gets me out on the other side of the best comes to the fore for them in a really interesting way, and then we see another shift happen from 38 to about 49. So again that older millennial cohort and traditionally, and then part of Gen X, which is where that experiential what can I discover? What new experiences can I have starts to come back into the fore, like, okay, I'm kind of starting into maybe that act two of my life where I've got some of that other stuff figured out and under control. I can turn my attention a little bit back more to me and what I want to be doing, and then they can have that opportunity to shift more into that more experiential what do I want out of life, what do I do lens?

Mary Mathes:

Then we see there's another shift that happens from 50 to about 60.

Mike Giambattista:

Just anecdotally, when I was mentioning that particular shift, I happened to be talking to people who kind of fit into those age ranges, who kind of fit into those age ranges, and you could, you could visibly see the light bulbs going off over their heads as they kind of went Hmm, that's me, or Hmm, that's my mom, or Hmm, that's my um, described to a T but. But you could see, uh, uh in their faces the absolute acknowledgement of of these ideas. But I don't think. You know, look, as marketers, we run hard and we run fast and we have a lot of stuff to get done.

Ingrid Sierra:

And you know, I'm the first to admit that, unless it impacts my goal for the day, for the moment I'm not going to pay attention to it, yeah, but if you think about it, from talking about it from a marketer point of view, it's actually it's actually make a lot of sense and and it's super easy to implement.

Ingrid Sierra:

Like if we, just if you, we just think at a messaging level or like highlighting some thinking of me with, like um, financial products, for example, like just you can, in an instance, see which product features you need to highlight and the hierarchy of messaging and features you highlight to actually respond to those different psychological frameworks. And it's I mean, it's a no-brainer when you just like think about it and you put that on paper and then it's obviously a matter of test, iterate those messaging across. Like where are those people? What channels do they use? That's where it gets a little bit more like complex with all your, your, your, your campaigns and stuff. But the initial point of really uh matching your um ideal customer profile with your uh, your, your, your product basically is it's, it's such a great tool.

Mary Mathes:

Yeah, and this is that how am I navigating daily life? Viewpoint and context does matter, so that's one of the things that we're looking at when we engage with a client In your context of interest. Is this different? And if it is different, the degree to degree to which okay like to do that and how I really got to switch from how I like to navigate the world to figure out this thing where there's tension there.

Mary Mathes:

That's another thing that's really important to uncover and look at. But you're absolutely right, like understanding, understanding at this broad level, I mean, the biggest overarching takeaway here is that it's not where none of us is, none of these cohorts really is primarily driven by that functional. You know, I'm going to sit down and make a spreadsheet and make that and choose the most rational choice, like everything, when you, everything that people, when they're consciously trying to describe their behavior the way that they they think that they think in the way that they would try to describe oh, this is what I would do. It's really actually these other lenses that are much more prominent for most of life.

Mary Mathes:

We're not as rational as we think we are. It's these more emotional lenses, the other values that are coming to the fore, and when you understand that and can activate against it, it can really change the ways that you want to talk to people, the kinds of information you want to give them, the kinds of you know whether you know it's more about, you know imagery and evoking. Hey, what this is, what this is going to be like versus. Here's a table comparing option a, b and c to each other and what you get with each one. It's you know, it's the way that you grab their attention and keep it and get your message across is very, very different when you understand what kind of a brain you're trying to reach.

Mike Giambattista:

I love the way you put that, when you understand what kind of a brain you're trying to reach. And you know I spend my life in this space and I can tell you that there isn't a single bit of research I have ever seen that would indicate that most purchases are rational in nature.

Mary Mathes:

Yes, and I don't have the full breakdown of when we looked at men, what did we see? But I would like to caveat that this is also going to be true for them. I'm not saying well, women are emotional and the men are the rational ones. I'm saying that we as people that those are more emotional, like that conformity, like what are other people doing.

Mary Mathes:

The experience that all of those are playing a role in describing behavior far more than that really rational, functional. And in fact, when we look at this at that gen pop level and we've tracked this trend over time predominantly what we've been seeing for the last few years is that that impulsive, instinctual one is really the one that has been driving behavior at the total population level. It looks like it's starting, like it's peaked, and maybe we're going to see that to come down and a couple of these other ones might be starting to kind of come ramp back up. But even there again, still it's not the it's the it's the experience and the conformity. Those are starting to slowly start to trend back up now at that gen pop level. So whoever you're trying to reach it's, it's just, it's not all about making these really functional, rational plans. There's a lot more to be gained from thinking about these other ways that people are making decisions.

Mike Giambattista:

What we're what we think we've got here. Um it, the conversations almost immediately boiled and, you know, took a direction of okay, how can I now use this unique set of insights to direct what I'm, what I'm trying to pull off here and um, ingrid, you're a marketer, you're a marketer, you're a marketer's marketer. I'd love to hear from you. You know you've spent, you've spent a lot of time in this report, as I have. You know, how do you, how do you actually make this actionable? How do you? How do you? What's the utility here in your world? Because you know you're now working in financial services, but you know, maybe that'll lead into a broader conversation about how other marketers and other verticals can actually take advantage of this.

Ingrid Sierra:

Yeah, and that's a very good point and I think really it applies at many, many stages of a journey and not only marketing, to be fair. I mean, if you think about products, that's at the very starting point of thinking of creating a product. You should actually have those things in mind. And I'm not talking woman here. I'm talking about those kind of four elements around the impulse, the experience, the conformity and the function, because basically maybe you want to create a product that is fully into one of those areas and then that would define your messaging and who you are talking to. So it's almost like at the start of that journey. Or you want something that actually is going to be a little bit more open, and then you can.

Ingrid Sierra:

You have to think about the content of your product or how it is designed and how it applies to those different things, and now we have tools like gamification, for example, that can totally help almost like unpick any of these with different like triggers and mechanics, right?

Ingrid Sierra:

So that's what your product product point of view.

Ingrid Sierra:

Then you have like what you would call your product marketing or your go-to-market, and that's what I was alluding to earlier, where you actually, based on that product you've created.

Ingrid Sierra:

You totally understand to which of these you need to actually apply your product to and that helps you find your messaging, your ideal customer profile and all of that stuff and your audiences ultimately. And then you apply it at a more granular level to your marketing channels and campaigns and, and, and, potentially a lot of testing along those lines and and, and. I guess what would be interesting is to sort of like, almost like, uh, close the loop at the end of that and go back to your product and see if, if you were on the on the right path along along the journey. But I would say that for me it's almost like it's almost a set of insights that you should have as a running thing alongside your product and marketing work and journey and constantly like sense, checking it and like doing the right research to see how it evolves and how you appeal to those four psychological traits. Really, yes.

Mary Mathes:

I completely agree traits.

Mike Giambattista:

Really, I completely agree. I'm thinking out loud as to how many marketers I know who are capable of that probably all of them, but I don't know that anybody's really doing kind of like spot checks on their psychological accuracy, which is a really smart thing to do. Yeah, and to be fair, I came across before this model I, which is a really smart thing to do.

Ingrid Sierra:

Yeah, and, to be fair, I came across before this model. I did quite a bit of research before around psychographics, and psychographics are actually really hard to implement because you have so many dimensions and also like really getting to to, to the, the, the bottom of what, what is going to be those core values customers have, etc. There are so many, um, different elements at play that, let's face it, we don't necessarily have access to or we don't know about that. Although I love the theory, I have never really been able to apply it. Well, this is, I would say and apologize, mary, if I'm not describing the way you would, but I think it's a much more simplified version of that that has a lot more practicality and actionability for, I guess, probably achieving the same result.

Mike Giambattista:

So, yeah, Mary's not arguing with you, that's good.

Mary Mathes:

There's a lot of power in the fact that it's we talk a lot about like working model-based instead of model-free. I guess this is the model, excuse me. There's the four and there are subtypes and nuances to each of these, but, broadly speaking, there's basically the four and there are, there are subtypes and nuances to each of these, but broadly speaking, as you know, there's these, the four drivers, and you know it's yeah, that covers, that covered, like we've, you know we've, we haven't, we're not missing one like that's you, you can, you can find one of the four that's going to explain behavior in universally any context and it gives you a lot of freedom to. There's a lot and there's a lot of confidence that can come from really understanding. Yeah, we, okay, we've, we've thought of, we've covered everything you know, versus a more traditional segmentation to the psychographics as well.

Mary Mathes:

We gotta get all of these different attitudinal statements and hopefully, when we, you know, look at the data later it's going to come there, you're going to find these things that come together in group, like with like, and then it'll help, it'll tell us who we got to go find and you know this is there's a lot of simplicity and just like, well, we got to capture these four things and that's going to get us most of what we need to know and it tells us a lot about how, what we can do and how we can better activate, because we've, at this core level, understood how their brain is working and that ultimately explains a lot of that other attitudinal and psychographic stuff that you measure, you know, a little bit further down the line.

Ingrid Sierra:

So there's I it's really, I find it to be a very powerful framework that and you can think of grounds that are actually, maybe without honestly knowing it, who are applying it and doing it, in my view, so yeah, I wouldn't mind talking a little bit about some of the other themes that bubbled up in the research.

Mike Giambattista:

I've got two in mind that I think are worth talking about and we can go anywhere you'd like with these. But one theme would be ethical consumerism. In this podcast and in the things we publish on the customer, we've talked a lot about that, the pluses and minuses, the validity of the whole idea, what brands can do with it, transparency versus, you know, greenwashing and all those kinds of things. But, um, I wonder if we could just discuss a little bit your understandings of of what that really means. What does ethical consumerism mean? Uh, to the female shopping cohort, and and Mary, if you want to, if you want to take the first stab at that, or Ingrid, you're welcome to.

Mary Mathes:

Well, from our perspective, I think the important thing to keep in mind with concepts like ethical consumerism is A there can be that say-do gap. Whereas you go into traditional research and ask like, oh, do you buy? There can be that say-do gap whereas you go in traditional research and ask like, oh, do you buy? I only buy brands that fit with my values or that are sustainable, et cetera. And then you might see, well, actually, when you look at the scanner data, it doesn't always translate and I think some of that comes from again understanding what's the lens I'm looking at this through, is it? And I think I think, with with things like that, there's off there's a lot of that conformity lens going up like, well, there's kind of people like me buy organic.

Mary Mathes:

People like me should, you know, should care about the value, you know, and gen like gen z, as a I often hear being described as, oh well, they really care about these. You know that brands are like them and share their values and all that. There's sort of that social norming pressure to like, oh, this is the thing that we all source to care about and that's what I'll say. And then you know, when it's just me at the checkout counter. Maybe something else actually better defines my behavior. Maybe I'm going more for that impulse, like well, I'm still buying the gummy bears.

Mary Mathes:

But this one, I know this one tastes good or something like that, so I would caution, keep that in mind. What is really driving why we consciously purport to value those things and what? What do we really value and how do you, how do you be positioned in line with that? How do you make that, how do you make that message fit with what's really driving behavior in a way that closes that, say, do gap.

Ingrid Sierra:

Right, I completely agree with that, and I think we probably don't see enough reports that are putting side by side the intention, um, and the reality, and the yeah and and, and. There's a lot of different like that go into that. There's doing the right thing, there's the virtue signaling, there's then a bit of shame that comes to play, and all of those things mixed. I think it's a very, very difficult topic to unpick and to really really know what's going on, and I think, probably more than with many other categories or things, that's where you have probably the most discrepancy between the behavior and the actual behavior.

Ingrid Sierra:

For, for all of good reasons, right, like you're a gen z, you are actually very concerned about that, but do you have the money to actually to actually make that happen? Or like, yes, and back to what we've seen? Right, you're at that phase of your life where all you want is experiences and then suddenly you're shamed if you fly. How do you, how do you make that happen? So, so, so all of that to say. I think it's it's a it's a very important topic, but, but way more complex and difficult than the stats we can see here and there.

Mike Giambattista:

Um, the great thing is that we talk about it and the more, the more we talk about it, probably the the the better, but uh, yeah I, I think you know, maybe this is, uh, one of the the great themes that we approach in a subsequent edition of the she Shops report, because it's a, it's a, it's a topic that bubbled up, it showed itself to be important to female shoppers. But maybe there's a chance to look at this a little more deeply and look at some of the complexities. You're right, because you know, uh, the psychology, the group psychology, is at play in a big way in this. You know, when it comes to ethical consumerism and values-based purchasing, um, and that can, that can be really treacherous waters to navigate. I mean, I mean every, at least every month, we see another large brand that stuck their foot in it because, you know, they just didn't have the sensitivities and sensibilities to navigate what they were doing well enough and ended up offending or, you know, or creating a false offense, which is almost even worse, you know, um.

Mike Giambattista:

So I'm I'm going to suggest that, um, along with the vertical approaches that we're talking about, for the next editions, that we unpack this I'm sorry to unpick this, uh, for our europeans there, uh, a little more deeply, because it's clearly a thing, I mean, this comes across my desk thematically a lot and it kind of comes in waves, but every time somebody, some brand, steps in poop, it becomes a big thing. You know, are they greenwashing? Are they really serious? Do they really understand their customers? Or were you know, is this like a tin ear effort where they just didn't get it? And you know what's the blowback? And we could go through and name brands right now if we wanted to, but it's a half. It happens and it's important, and it sounds like we have the ability to really, uh, pull this apart in a way that could be meaningful for brands.

Ingrid Sierra:

So I'm gonna I'm gonna keep hammering that one and I think an element that could potentially be valuable to add to that is sustainable marketing right the sustainable marketing is emerging, but probably I don't think it's a priority for the majority of marketers at the moment. So that, again back to that what we were just talking about, from a consumer point of view, we have a little bit of that kind of conflicting thing. You exactly have the same thing with your marketing right, so that's probably another interesting thing to look into.

Mike Giambattista:

So the C-Shop Support First Edition is meant as an overview. As you've heard, there are plans afoot to create subsequent editions that are kind of more vertically oriented and also pulling apart this idea of ethical consumerism and how that impacts brands Arise, say how the psychological underpinnings of how shoppers react to those brand activities. So lots and lots and lots to talk about here. But again I want to thank Mary and the team at Alpha Diver for all of your contributions here. They're huge and really eye-opening and really actionable. And then a special thank you to my partner in crime here, ingrid Sierra, for the incredible contributions you've made, not only to the customer but to this report and just kind of pulling off something that we think has real importance in the marketplace. So thank you to both.

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