Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful moms out there! Hope you had a great day. Being a mom is said to be the most amazing and rewarding job, but it is also the most difficult and demanding one. I think we all know that. Not only do moms care for their children, their families and their households, they also juggle work and parenting as well as maintain friendships and find time for their own activities. Sounds challenging, doesn’t it? But it seems that European moms have found a remedy to help them “do it all”: the Internet.
A recent report by the European Interactive Advertising Association Digital Mums with Young Children reveals that the Internet plays an increasing role in the lives of European moms with young children. It helps them enrich and manage their busy lives, from maintaining friendships through saving time to carrying out research. Not only do 65% of European moms with children ages 0-4 use the Internet, 61% of them claim that they would be lost without the Internet.
Digital moms access the Internet in a variety of locations, the main one being home (95%), followed by work (41%). It’s for brands to know that European moms are most active online during the day (78%). However they mainly use the Internet for “me time” once they put their kids to bed, between 5:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. (72%).
Finding better products and services is important for all moms and they seem to be using the Internet to make that happen. And they are successful too: six in 10 European moms claim to have found a better product/service because of the information they obtained online. Moms also use the Internet for entertainment purposes – 32% watch video online via PC, laptop, mobile phone or PDA; 32% download TV, film or video; and 31% downloads music. In general, sites most visited by moms are the ones containing information about family & kids (57%), clothing & fashion (56%), banking & finance (50%).
European digital moms are frequent online shoppers: 92% of all digital moms with young children have shopped online, buying an average of 14 items and spending €643 every six months. When researching products, European moms consider both customer review (54%) as well as the reviews from experts (52%). The main reason for shopping online is it gets the job done while saving time – something in short supply for most young moms.
It’s clear that young European moms are embracing the Internet and developing deeper engagement with online content. Not only do they turn to the Internet to maintain friendships and manage their busy lives, they also go online to look for advice and information to help them make better purchasing decisions. Marketers targeting young moms in Europe should focus on content that is entertaining and invest heavily in review programs, since those seem to weigh heavily in purchase decisions.