Data shows men get more emotional over spring

Normally, a warm spring breeze would bring a smile to many women’s faces as they get excited about the new season after a long winter. For them, spring is associated with colorful dresses, bright makeup and blooming flowers.

However, data collected by Cheil Worldwide, an advertising arm of Samsung Group, has overturned the perception of spring, showing that men also look forward to the season. According to Cheil Data and Analytics Center, a group under Cheil Worldwide that analyzes consumer patterns based on Big Data, more men than women get emotional over spring. Big Data has been widely used as a tool by companies to study and understand society and individuals.

The center analyzed online behaviors, including buzzwords, of consumers in their 20s to 40s in March and found that men, especially those in their 40s, are extremely emotional about the spring season.

Cheil Worldwide said that based on the results of analyzing about 100 million pieces of Big Data, popular search words related to spring often dealt with spring fashion, such as coordination and jackets. Data showed that 40.5 percent of men made searches regarding spring fashion, higher than 37.5 percent of women.

The agency also noted that more men (36.7 percent) searched emotional words like spring breeze and flowers than women (28.1 percent). According to the data, popular search words among women were more practical, related to spring cleaning or weather.

“Taking into consideration the more diversifying consumer features, we expect companies to utilize actual behavioral data [Big Data] when coming up with marketing strategies in the future rather than relying on existing survey methods,” said Cho Kyung-shik, head of Cheil Data and Analytics Center. “Existing surveys tend to rely on respondents’ incomplete memory and thus can bring biased responses.”

BY LEE EUN-JOO [angie@joongang.co.kr]