When it comes to going to the supermarket, my husband and I typically shop together. We have different preferences for certain foods, so this works out well. But there are times, when he’ll doing the shopping and I happy to relinquish that role. But I remember, when my mother was the primary household shopper and my father rarely entered the grocery store. Now society’s roles are changing and the primary household shopper is no longer just the female.
According to FMI’s The 2016 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report, 85% of all adults report that they have at least half the household responsibility for grocery shopping. Today, everyone is pitching in and doing the grocery shopping.
It’s no surprise to me that more men are shopping for food narrowing the gap with women. The FMI report reveals that 79% of all adult men are significant grocery shoppers in their households—up from 73% last year. In addition, 90% of all adult women are significant grocery shoppers. Similar to my husband and I, 22% of all grocery shoppers are shared-shoppers with a 50/50 split in grocery shopping responsibility.
According to the report, only 18% of all grocery shoppers are Sole shoppers (either in a single-parent household or a multi-adult household). Of that total, 14% of Sole shoppers represent single-parent households, and only 4% are doing all the shopping in a household that has multiple adults.
Marketers should keep this in mind when developing packaging design and point-of-sale materials. There was a time when the focus was solely on the female shopper. As more men take control of the shopping cart, products should appeal to both sexes and in some cases may be geared to one or the other.
