One new study reveals some interesting data about cell phone usage, particularly by men. Click here. The data reveals some interesting tidbits, particularly that men talk longer and speak faster than women. While this has huge ramifications for mobile commerce, it presents some interesting opportunities for marketers who want to attract and or influence mobile phone users. Perhaps all those gender based assumptions we make have been wrong all along! This presents an opportunity for PR people and numerous related tech businesses. What do you think?
Piggyback PR 
When I first saw the title of this blog entry, I was really surprised, and then I read the study, and it wasn’t what I expected. It’s kind of misleading. I mean, when we think of who “gabs” more on the phone, we think of women talking for longer periods of time with their friends and family. But the study is about men making purchases over the phone, so that is about a different type of information exchange. That doesn’t really surprise me either.
I still don’t believe this, how men talk longer, faster or spend more time on their cell phone buying things. But maybe it really depends who and what are they talking about. A man will not stay on the phone talking about something they do not care about or just to talk. I think when most men talk on the phone, its more work related. Maybe the only reason why they talk faster is because they have a lot of pride and do not take the time to listen. Men like to do most of the talking, unless they are talking to their girlfriends. When it comes to work they like to take charge and put their opinions out there. And men are not picking about purchasing things so even though they spend longer time on the phone, women will look all else where to purchase things. They would use all kind of medium cell phone, computers, laptop, or even going to the store and check it out for themselves. Sorry this is just my opinion, I know not all men and women are like this.
While the stats may be true, I tend to still be in disbelief as well. I followed a few of the links and read more of the study and it definitely depends on the topic as well as being for a business type need. Auto repair phone calls, for example, were mostly placed by men, whereas pest control were mostly placed by women. I would also further hypothesize that this same metric doesn’t hold true in a social setting. However, we may never know, unless there is some huge invasion of privacy. This study was only able to be conducted because they used analyzing software to review recorded phone calls to business. We don’t have that same type of repository for social calls!
I was surprised when I read this blog, and I still can’t believe it is true. Either from my experience, or what I have seen from my friends, women talk longer than men. I can only think the reason for men mat talk longer is because they have business conversations via phones, or anything that are very important and need to be done right way. But women can talk on the phone without any purpose sometimes. They just chat. Moreover, I think to the young generation, people are likely to text message instead of calling someone. It may be cause some percentage of women texting more than directly calling, since women’s conversation can be so ramdon sometime. I think this is one of the reason why men have higher percentage of making the phone call longer than women.
I think that you are making a very important point Kenny. I think that it would be very intrusive and unethical to ask about the topic of people phone conservations. But until we know the subject of it it can be either a woman or a man it doesn’t make a point.
Men or woman can use the same phone for professional use or private use. The professional use of the phone is different.
An other point is also who the man or woman is calling. A man can call a woman who talks more than him and vice versa.
Good points, Kenny. I didn’t do the follow-up research. This study seems very biased and not very conclusive. Generally if most people believe something to be true, like women gabbing more on the phone, there is probably some truth to it for a reason, so why are they trying to convince us otherwise with out-of-context information?
I foubd this Bri be quite interesting. I have to agree with Shauba though, I feel the increase in talking is probably due to several factors, like work related things. I know we are progressing as a people and men and women stereotypes are beging to blur, but I still can’t imagine men just wanting to gab on the phone, that goes for women as well. There must be some reason for the increase other then simple conversation, in my opinion at least.
As the article states, gender based assumptions must be looked dead in the eye, I find it hard to believe this. I think there must be additional research done on this subject because the use of cell phones depending on gender is a very broad subject. This could vary from various cases. Im not sure if the data and percentages are extracted only from the Seattle region or other regions, however I would imagine that use of cell phones on a national level would even out between men and women or perhaps weighing more towards women. Maybe if the categories would be more specific as to what type of shopping should be looked further into by researchers. For example shopping for clothes vs shopping for electronics, or another broader scope in terms of shopping.
Once I read the article and the Marchex study findings and found, ”Men talk longer and faster than women when using their cell phone to buy stuff from retailers” I guess I was less surprised. The business categories that were looked at in the Marchex study had a good mix of products and services, however as someone who has worked in sales and customer service it doesn’t matter if I was speaking to a man or a woman, the level of service always stayed the same and the answers to the endless questions were always the same. I see how this study information can be useful to marketers focused on M-commerce, but from a business standpoint the sales and customer service reps always have pressure to keep their talk time on the phone to a minimum so that the next caller can be addressed or the next sale can be made. So maybe the information from this study can be drilled into further and find out what’s causing men to talk longer on the phone. If it turns out they are asking the same general questions about a product or service then the business could easily address that in a campaign or even on the toll-free line as a pre-recorded message while customers are waiting to have their call answered.
I think that it is all about stereotypes. One very expanded stereotype is that women are more emotional. So they should spend more time in the phone and family to express those emotions. But in fact the emotional level of people is different from a personality to another. So we can’t make assumptions about the gender of the person but more about their personality trait. Even if the topic of a conversation may differ from a woman to a man, the time spent depend on the personality.
I agree with you. However, I also doubt that how comprehensive is the researching report. I noticed that the report was focus on men and women in business use. Men use cell phone more often than women because they need to make the call in business conversation. As a women, I know that making a phone call to other people mostly are not for business purposes. They call their family and friends to express emotions, tell their life stories.
Something similar has come up in my Consumer Behavior class. A group in my class did a project on what kind people use smart phone shopping applications. They believed that women would be the vast majority of users, however, they found that men significantly used shopping applications as well. The difference was that women were more likely to buy products using the application, rather than just compare prices or browse products. In terms of cell phone usage, I live with three male roommates and I’d say that they talk on their cell phones just as much as I do, if not more. To me, it seems that men view the act of talking on a cell phones as more practical or utilitarian than texting, which may lead them to talk long enough to say what they need to say, but as quick as possible.
i’m not really surprised knowing about this, because for me i’m not the guy who likes to txt or chat, i like the old way which is calling or face to face communication. while most of the girls that i met don’t like phone calles and find it annoying and they like to txt more so they could multitask, but for men i guess it’s hard for us to multitask so we choose to make a phone call
Okay to put the issue to rest I will chime in! I learned in my social psychology course that women and men speak about the same amount of words per day and basically in terms of talking are equals, This makes sense because the perception that women gab more is a stereotype, and what are stereotypes? Generalizations about the majority of the population based on an insignificantly large minority.
I know men are just as social as women the only difference is that they tend to differ in how they socialize. So, while they talk a lot and at about the same rate as women they do it while playing sports or going out to the bar.
Plus, men are more likely to use devices that allow them to shop online, if I have learned anything in my formal and informal primary research it’s that men love online shopping because it’s virtually painless, quick, and easy. That’s what men want when it comes to shopping. And it’s an important untapped market I think.
I was surprised at first to hear that men talk more than women on phones. It is true that we make gender stereotyped assumptions on everyday things and it is refreshing to hear that someone is actually looking for facts-based evidence of those assumptions. To accurately capture and cater to the habits/desires/needs of a particular audience, it is crucial to perform unbiased research and fully understand a target segments profile. This research just goes to show that we may make more uninformed/biased decisions or observations than previously thought.
I was also surprised to hear that men talk more than women. We do make assumptions in regards to men and women and in most cases we would think that females speak more than males do in regards to cell phones. From my experience, I do talk more than my partner does, the difference is quite significant. I would much rather pick up the phone and have a personal conversation with someone rather than to sms, imessage, email, etc. I believe that text messaging is impersonal therefore I would rather have a phone conversation with someone. It is possible that people used for this study also believe the same thing. In addition, in today’s society it is normal for men and women to access the internet. Now that smart phones have become more and more common, people are utilizing applications that allow them to talk, shop, search the web, network, etc. Smart phones allow men and women to quickly access what they need in quickly. By the touch of a button people are able to access what they need. The statistics shared do surprise me specifically because I was not aware that any man could talk on the phone more than I can, but apparently I was wrong.
I am not quite sure this is the response that you are looking for. I just happened to lose train of thought while I was reading this, and I linked it back to materials in my past classes, so I thought it might be worth noting. This is just another example of the capabilities that we now have as business professionals to measure nearly anything that is in existence. We have mastered statistics, and analysis, and our computers are even better than we are.
This information is all good, in fact it’s great. The point is that it doesn’t really matter. Who cares who uses what technology except the companies that sells the information? They are sharing it because they want to strengthen their brand Id and appear that they understand their market better than their competitors. The reality is that IS existing everywhere, and in every institution. If you do not have services that deliver network effects, and switching costs. You will not exceed a low totem pole spot.
I think this is interesting and could be useful. However, I also believe that these kind of things change all the time. As technology advances, so does the way we use technology. I understand this was over a year ago and I think its safe to assume that things have changed even since then. Keeping up to date on how we use technology is an important tool for marketers in all aspects and any information found in studies such as these is useful.
As technology is improved, the company will get business opportunity more and more. Today most of us have a phone and it give the company new business opportunity. However I don’t think this information help development of m commence. the research mentioned women tend to spend time on prone more than men. but I think women take a phone for more personal thing or friend. on the other hand men take prone for business. so this information does not surprise me.