Why mobile is the best way to reach mum

Giraffe Insights presents highlights from their conference talk at Kind + Jugend 2015. Giraffe Insights, along with sister company Generation Media, were invited by organisers to talk about market-relevant topics from the baby and toddler outfitting industry at the recent Kind + Jugend conference. In August 2015, Giraffe carried out an international survey amongst 1,800 expectant women and mums of preschool children in the UK, USA, Germany and Spain to understand how they seek out information about products and respond to advertising. Mums were invited to take part after visiting the BabyCentre website in their respective countries. Whilst every mum is different, there are strong commonalities when it comes to information seeking. Firstly, the internet is her number 1 reference point, with 67% using it to access information on a daily basis. For mums expecting their first child, this rises to 75%, increasing with each trimester. And secondly, with 93% of mums using their mobile phone to go online, it’s the device used most frequently and consistently throughout the day. Her top 3 reasons for accessing the internet are: for general information about her pregnancy and for her baby (86%), for social networking (83%) and for healthcare information (82%). When it comes to purchase, almost half say they buy products online on a daily to weekly basis and almost 3 quarters are researching before they buy. So where does mum think she’s going to be most influenced by advertising? On average across all 4 markets, 31% of mums thought parenting websites would be most effective for advertising aimed at them and this was highest in the UK (34%). However, this is also where the strongest market differences came through, with Spanish and American mums preferring in-store (34% and 38% respectively) and where German mums showed most divergent and varied attitudes, with almost equal proportions choosing TV (26%), parenting websites (25%) and a further 25% parenting magazines – which compares to just 10% of mums in the UK.