Non-Working Women Need To Be Studied Too

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

Do working women have different needs than women who do not have paid employment? It seems like that probably would be true, but nature, extent and even the cause is not clear.

After all, women who don’t have paid employment can still be very busy — there is volunteer work, children, spouses, elderly parents etc., which can all drain time. And even if the needs are different, it is not clear that it is the work in and of itself that makes them different. For example, many people who do not have paid employment may have very high-earning spouses. If so, it may be affluence that causes both spouses not to work and changes in food purchasing habits.

This study is intriguing but raises as many questions as it answers:

1) Strong focus on health and wellness: Is it true that working women have a stronger focus on health and wellness than women without paid employment? There is no comparison group in the study, so we just don’t know.

2) Responsible for ensuring their families eat healthy: Once again, do women who work feel more responsible for keeping their families healthy than women who do not? There is no evidence for this.

3) Businesses are establishing wellness programs that encourage healthy eating — working women are taking notice. Do such corporate programs lead to behavioral changes? Maybe women who are not working have more time to go to the gym and get equally motivated in another way.

4) Ninety-six percent of working women regularly shop perimeter aisles.

But doesn’t almost everyone shop the perimeter aisles? It is not clear that working women “over-index” here.

5) Fresh fruit was the leading food that working women take to work to support their healthy eating habits.

The wording here is a little confusing. That fresh fruit would be the No. 1 snack to “support their healthy eating habits” does not surprise. But isn’t this the same for women without paychecks?

6) Working women like to take their time when making their produce-buying decisions.

The idea here is that working women plan for the purchase of fresh produce and evaluate the produce again in-store. This is almost certainly true but, once again, hardly seems a unique trait to working women.

7) Produce was the leading category that working women give thought to throughout the entire path to purchase, with 41 percent indicating that they make their decisions both pre-store and in-store.

This is kind of inherent in the nature of produce. One plans on buying apples but determines the variety after seeing what is offered that day. The frustrating part of this research, though, is that despite this being an accurate description of the way working women shop, there is virtually no reason to believe — and certainly, the study doesn’t tell us — that women without paid employment behave differently.

8) While not asked directly about their preference for convenience, the data shows this is one of the greatest influences on the shopping patterns of working women.

The fact that a woman is not working does not mean she wants to spend her whole life in the kitchen, and many non-working women have the means to do other things, so convenience can still be important. Sure some women, both working and non-working, have loads of staff to help them, so they may not care about convenience, but what percentage could that possibly be?

9) Ninety-five percent indicated that they make a shopping list so they won’t forget an item.

Yes, but do non-working women want to forget things? For this study to be particularly helpful, you need a comparative study with women who don’t work for pay so we can see if they approach things differently from working women.

10) Forty-five percent said they do so to save time in the store. Once again, just because a woman doesn’t have paid employment doesn’t mean she wants to hang out in the supermarket all day.

11) Some marketers continue to view grocery shopping as a task that is planned at home, but the data shows otherwise.

In fresh produce, this has never been the case. New-crop peaches just in, bananas not ripened properly, cross-merchandising promotions — all these things have always changed produce purchasing right at the store.

12) Eighty-four percent of working women said they regularly/occasionally add items to the list at work.

There are a thousand reasons — including hearing an ad on the radio or a friend mentioning a sale at the market — why a working woman would add or subtract things to the list during the day. But guess what? Non-working women do the same thing.

13) One reason this occurs is that when it comes time to make the shopping trip, it’s often between the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Working women may run into a store to pick up something for their own lunch at an office, and while there, they may remember they need cans of soup or other grocery items. But, for the most part, working women aren’t likely to do a lot of perishable food shopping until the work day is done. It is not clear exactly how the shopping hours of working women differ from those of non-working women.

14) Forty-nine percent of respondents indicated they make multiple trips to the grocery store Monday through Friday, and 46 percent regularly do so after work or on a lunch break.

Once again, the question is how does this differ from non-working women?

The advice WorkPlace Impact gives is fine. Produce vendors should look to influence people at a variety of times and in a variety of ways. But for research about a particular population segment to be helpful, we have to have a point of reference.