Researchers have always explained women’s love of shopping as the hunter versus gatherer instinct. Men would bring home the kill and women would forage for grains and berries. Since these primitive times the world has changed and technology has been a key component to our evolution. Taking a look at a new study by Zmags reveals we may not have changed that much.

To make it easy lets take a look at the infographic from their site and see what they found:

We can see that consumers have an overall (87%) preference for shopping on web and mobile sites. 60% shop using either digital or print ads, or both, and only 4% are using mobile apps. these figures suggest that there is still a lot of opportunity to develop application based shopping.

Interestingly enough, the infographic also reveals purchasing preferences in the different consumer product categories. One item which stands out is for tablet users. They sure do seem to love their toys and electronics- two categories which I think go hand and hand for the young and young at heart. Perhaps this purchasing behavior is how they came to have their tablets before anyone else.

But of even more interest is, who is buying. The most prominent internet shopper (gatherer) is the 40-something female. Her household income is around 63,000/ year and she is an active Facebook user (over 80% connected). 43% of these shoppers own smart phones and 16% are using tablets.

This leaves me to wonder; are men too busy hunting for a good deal online to actually commit to buying something? Either way, this research suggests we still prefer browser-based shopping over apps and that means there’s a lot of room for growth in that market.