CHAPTER 1 - University of Exeter

28
Chapter 1 - Introduction
are large and when they are small. The only firm agreement that can be found is that
when gender is (or is made) salient, differences between men and women will be
more pronounced (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Since there can be either large or
small differences between men and women on different variables, this could also
apply to shopping behaviour. With this in mind, it makes sense to argue that in
certain situations men and women are more similar in their approaches to shopping
and in other situations they are more different. In addition to the questions mentioned
above, this thesis will aim to explore potential similarities and differences between
male and female shopping behaviours.
Sex differences in shopping
Looking at the development of shopping research, the way research was
approached and interpreted has gone through a number of changes. Stone’s (1954)
work introduced the first phase or stage where the majority of studies were
conducted only with women as research participants (Stone, 1954, Darden & Ashton,
1975, Westbrook & Black, 1985). It is debatable whether or not it was an issue that
only women were asked to participate in these studies but this seemed to be the status
quo at the time and gender was hardly debated as an issue in these studies.
Considering this and the historical division of labour (men in the work place and
women in the home, so women were more likely to be the ones taking care of the
shopping as well as being readily available research participants) it makes sense that
women were seen to be the predominant shoppers for a long time, while men were
thought to not be involved in the activity at all.
The next stage seemed to begin in the 80s and 90s when consumer
researchers appeared to recognise that previous research had used only women as