Mums Dominate Facebook Shopper Contingent

Facebook may be many things but a cyber-venue buzzing with shopping activity it certainly isn’t. Online purchases through the social media network are still a rarity and in case you are wondering who does the shopping, it is mostly women, stay-at-home mums in particular.

This piece of information comes from an article in the Telegraph, which in turn learned it from Payvment’s co-founder and CEO Christian Taylor.

Payvment is the commerce platform that powers 80% of the shopping done on Facebook so its boss should know what he is talking about. As Taylor told the Telegraph, 850 million people are using the social network but only 1.5 million of those engage in transactions every month. Women represent an “overwhelming majority” of the people who use the site to buy something and stay-at-home mums make up most of that group.

Baby clothes and assorted “cute” items for kids are by far the most popular merchandise sold on Facebook, Taylor said. He suggested this may have to do with the fact that Facebook provides mothers with a communication platform which largely removes the element of loneliness from stay-at-home parenting. Mothers can now get together online and trade child-raising tips, as well as exchange information and make recommendations about baby products.

While shopping on Facebook is in its embryo stage, there is every indication that things are changing, Taylor went on to add. The number of users buying things on the network is rising by 20% every month and over 3 million items are currently available for purchase on Facebook.