Are magazines more of a girl product or a boy product? Most people I speak to seem to think mags are more skewed towards girls.
This perception tends to dominate because the biggest selling mags happen to be for women, and as a result, we see more advertising and branding for these titles. They are also more sensationalist in nature, focusing more on gossip and celebrities. These are undoubtedly more female orientated.
Women buy more mags, but there are probably as many titles targeted towards men as there are towards women. If I had to guess, women would buy in greater volumes, while men would buy a greater range.
Interestingly, we see a small bias towards female customers when it comes to subscriptions. This becomes more pronounced at gift giving times such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day. We would have thought that males would buy more gift subscriptions than women, as it is a more stereotypically female item, hence lending itself to be gifted. However, perhaps the top of mind factor is in play here, where people give gifts based on what comes to mind with regards to what they would like to receive.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, we will see our gift subscriptions increase in volume. I wonder if this year girls will continue to out-subscribe the boys, or whether the boys will wisen up to the joys of subscriptions?
After reading this (especially “If I had to guess, women would buy in greater volumes, while men would buy a greater range.”) I started thinking about it and began to wonder whether it was true, or whether it appeared more that way because magazines such as Woman’s Day, New Idea, New Weekly, Grazia, Who Weekly, Take 5, That’s Life etc are all weekly magazines skewed towards women and with the exception of Zoo Magazine (which is far less broad based in it’s target market than the other examples), there is no real male equivalent to those magazines. There are magazines that may (or may not – I don’t know) be more popular with men than women that are weekly (Time Magazine, The Week etc), but they are not targeting a demographic based on gender. Could this be what gives the perception of women purchasing greater volumes of magazines?
They make excellent kitty letter when shredded, for both male & female cats.