#SnapChart: How the car conversation changes by gender

15th March 2016

In October 2015, we tracked all Facebook mentions of Ford, BMW, and Honda in the US & UK. After analysing the dataset we were able to understand the gender differences in how people talk about car brands online. We found the best way to visualise this is in a single flow diagram:

Auto gender conversation

The chart reveals that men are predominantly talking about style and mechanical specification - they are as conscious about what a car looks like as women are. For men, safety, the environment, and reliability are thrown out of the window when purchasing a car, making space for aesthetics and power to dominate.

As well as talking about the style of cars, the environment is high on the agenda for women. This suggests women aren't as concerned about power and performance as they are about the harm their new purchase will have on the environment. Women are possibly more open to buying electric cars than their counterparts - they want their new car to look good, but to also cut CO2 emissions.

Men are more focused on the car's overall power in granular details, not necessarily in the finished product.  This shows in the fact that the fuel economy and performance are spoken about much more by men.  However, men and women are both equally concerned with the pricing of new cars, its convenience, reliability and how practical they are. Although it's not as heavily spoken about as a car's style, safety is also a major topic of conversation shared by both genders.

Although there is clear gender differentiation when talking about cars online, the dataset reveals that people choose to review and comment on aesthetics in much larger volumes than discussing car practicalities.

Alongside Dashboard, our new quarterly insights magazine for the automotive industry, we have also set up an automotive tracker on Pulsar. This tracker allows real-time reporting on the automotive industry and its audiences.

Want to know more about how you can get social insights from audience intelligence, or you’re interested in the Automotive tracker? Send an email to: [email protected]