Home Improvement News Bureau

Men Do Ask Directions

Home Improvement Survey Shows Differences Between Sexes

MONEY PIT NEWSBUREAU – November 1, 2004:  While homeowners turn to home improvement television more for entertainment than education, they tune into home improvement radio for project advice, tips and product information.

Tom Kraeutler and Debby Robinson know this better than anyone.  The expert team hosts The Money Pit, a nationally syndicated home improvement radio show that fields hundreds of calls on home improvement hang-ups each week.

Robinson and Kraeutler recently teamed up with Fred Miller, President of Consumer Specialists, and Managing Director of the Home Improvement Research Institute (HIRI), to determine the most common problems and projects home improvement minded consumers wanted to tackle.

By analyzing detailed records of almost 2,000 listener calls and emails to the program over the last two years, Miller’s team was able to determine the most common problems and projects consumers were concerned about.  Among the findings:

• Men were one and a half times more likely than women to ask how to do a project, perhaps proving that men will ask for directions.
• Women, on the other hand, were four times more likely than men to call and ask how to fix a project gone wrong.
• Women were twice as likely as men to use email to ask a home improvement question.
• Men were more likely than women to contact the show to get help with a home improvement problem.
• Women were over twice as likely to ask a safety question then were men.
• Almost 80% of consumers with home improvement questions want to know how to do a project, solve a problem, find a product or clean something.
• The top 10 projects consumers have questions about were Floor Coverings, Plumbing, Windows/Siding, Kitchen/Bath, Walls/Ceilings, Heating/Air Conditioning, Roofing, Bugs, Pests & Rodents, Indoor Air Quality/Mold; and finally Basements/Crawlspaces.

“We were able to determine who calls, what problems they want to talk about and what projects they want to do,” explains Miller.  “For example, we determined that almost 80 percent of the show’s audience wants to know how to fix a problem, do a project, find a product or clean something.  We also learned how consumer questions can vary by gender and by geography. And by comparing emails to calls; we even know how they prefer to ask those questions,” he said.

Kraeutler says that callers to the program are looking for easy to understand answers for home repair projects and 14 percent of those reaching out to the show did so purely to get a product recommendation from the expert team.

“They are often confused by advertising claims and turn to us for independent guidance on the right products, economical ways to complete their projects, new ideas – and even to prevent them from getting in over their heads,” he says.

Surprisingly, more men (63 percent) than women (37 percent) contact the show to ask questions and they do so in disproportionate numbers to the actual audience make up.

“We know that 46 percent of our audience is women yet they only account for 37 percent of those who contact the show.  It may be that while women are playing an increasingly major role in home improvement, they still may be somewhat more reluctant than men to reach out for help,” says Kraeutler.

Women seek help fixing problem projects
When it comes to who’s calling for advice on “how to do a project,” the study showed that men are one-and-a-half times more likely to pick up the phone to ask for help.  However, when it comes to calling to ask how to “fix a project gone wrong,” women are four times more likely to ask that question.

“It sounds like men will ask for directions but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get it right,” says Robinson   And, the team learned that while men don’t seem to mind calling to ask a question, women are twice as likely as men to email their question.

The data shows key topics on women’s home improvement list are plumbing, kitchens/bath, roofing, bugs, pests/rodents, indoor air quality/mold, basements and crawlspaces, and painting and wallpapering.  Men prefer to talk about floor coverings, windows/siding, foundations, insulation/ventilation; and decks.

“In our industry more than half of all home improvement dollars are spent by women,” says Robinson.  “While it might not surprise you to learn that women show more interest than men do in kitchen/bath or painting/wallpapering topics, even we were surprised by how many more roofing questions came from women than men.”

Where listeners live also has a huge impact on their concerns.  Consumers in the south were far more interested in doing projects themselves than those in the northeast.  Floor coverings were a big concern for those in the midwest, heating and air conditioning was a unusually high level concern for those in the south and west, and north-eastern consumers, who must batten the hatches for winter, were very concerned about issues like indoor air quality and mold.

‘This has been a fascinating project for us,” says Kraeutler.  “It’s just like tearing open the walls of a house.  Once you get inside, you never know what you might find.”

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