Studies have shown, over and over again, that, in general, women tend to be more of the emotional type buyers whereas men tend to be impulse buyers. This is, as you might imagine, not a hard and fast rule by any means. There are exceptions that prove the rule but, in general, it's fair to say that women make purchases based on emotional factors and men make purchases based on impulse factors. So, when targeting male customers, advertisers often focus on the impulse urge.
Point of purchase displays are a good example of advertising targeted to impulse buyers. A point of purchase display, or POS display, is a display that is designed to catch the buyer’s attention at the checkout counter. There are actually quite a few things that go into the design of such point of sale displays, but they are all usually designed around impulse purchasing at the point of sale counter. I learned all this while talking today to this person at the local candle shop. I was admiring the design of the custom point of sale display when I got into this whole discussion with the manager, who was very interesting and quite intelligent.
