Gender and Advertising

Abstract

There is a commercial imperative to take into account the gender of an advertisement's target audience and gender is the primary segmentation variable used by advertisers to capture attention and encourage action. This entry examines reasons why gender matters to advertisers and society. It discusses how men and women often react differently to adverts because of the differences in how they process information, with two theories dominating this field: the selectivity hypothesis and the item‐specific versus relational processing model. It discusses to what extent adverts can be manipulated to appeal to a particular gender, acknowledging that a commonly used strategy is to depict men in agentic roles and women in communal roles. With respect to online advertising, there appears to be a continuation of the agentic/communal distinction witnessed in offline platforms. Further, it is found that, notwithstanding some recent changes, gender stereotyping remains prevalent, particularly in relation to the portrayal of women's occupational status and women's portrayal in decorative roles. With that said, advertising's role in gender stereotyping is more of a reaction to, rather than a driver of, societal values, but has been shown to be lagging behind as societies move toward more gender equality. An examination on gender stereotyping in children's advertising reports broadly similar results to that reported by studies concerning advertising to adults. It is also agreed that men and women's role portrayal in advertising differs by culture, and that gender affects responses to advertising aimed at LGBT consumers.

Transcreation Strategies of Male-Related Traits from English Online Fragrance Labels into Chinese: From a Cultural Perspective

“…If these differences are not identified and translated appropriately, then the desired persuasive effects in the advertising campaigns will not be achieved. As argued by McCartan & McMahon (2020), when the male portrayals are consistent with the expectation of male customers, the advertising appeals will be more effective.…”

“…Advertising translators are confronted with the challenge of addressing male-related traits in different markets. Cross-cultural marketing has been recognised as challenging because of the diversity of markets across different nations (McCartan & McMahon, 2020). Male role expectations are deeply rooted in culture, with culture further defined as the "shared belief, attitudes, and behaviors associated with a large and distinct group of people" (p.13).…”

“…The other four dimensions include individualism, power distance, uncertain avoidance and long-term orientation, as exemplified by the cultural dimension between China and the US (Table 1). According to McCartan and McMahon (2020), research on the cross-cultural comparisons of gender portrayals can be conducted in countries with a diverse MAS index. However, the countries with various Individualism (IDV) indexes can also be explored regarding their male portrayals.…”

Antecedents and consequences of consumers' attitudes toward product placements: evidence from India

“…Several studies have shown that gender, a social structural variable in consumer socialization, impacts the acceptability of products placed in movies (Brennan et al, 2004;Gould et al, 2000;Gupta and Gould, 1997;McKechnie and Zhou, 2003;Sung et al, 2009) and video games (Kim and McClung, 2010). Certain products shown in media content are targeted to a specific gender and viewers tend to respond to such products accordingly (McCartan and McMahon, 2020). Several studies have reported that men tend to be more accepting of ethically charged products placed in entertainment media than women (Gould et al, 2000;Guido et al, 2010;Gupta and Gould, 1997;Tiwsakul et al, 2005).…”