Love at First Glance but Not After Deep Consideration: The Impact of Sexually Appealing Advertising on Product Preferences

Abstract

In advertising studies, the impact of sexually appealing advertisements (hereafter "ads") on consumers' product preferences is highly controversial. This paper explores (1) how such ads affect consumers' product preferences at the gazing stage (initial stage of exposure to the ad) and evaluation stage (final product preference), and (2) which type of product (utilitarian vs. hedonic) is more suited to such ads. We used an electroencephalogram to record participants' product preferences at the gazing stage and self-reported product preferences at the evaluation stage. The results indicated that participants preferred ads with high sex appeal at the gazing stage and ads with low sex appeal at the evaluation stage. Further, compared to utilitarian products, hedonic products were more suited to sexually appealing ads. The findings suggest that the effect of such ads on consumers' product preferences varies depending on their cognitive stage and the type of product advertised.

Decoding Three Different Preference Levels of Consumers Using Convolutional Neural Network: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

“…The surrounding environment, including friendship and emotion, can affect product endorsement and willingness-to-pay (Liao et al, 2019). Consumer behavior, financial services, evaluation stage, and decision-making in advertising are related to neural cortex response changes in current researches, further to verify a feasibility application in neuromarketing (Senior et al, 2015;Ramsøy et al, 2018;Wei et al, 2018;Ceravolo et al, 2019;Ma et al, 2019;Hu et al, 2020). Vences et al (2020) summarized a theoretical review of the main neural scientific research on neuromarketing's effectiveness, which is a neural measure tool, to enhance the emotional connection between consumers and organizations in social networks.…”

The Dark Side of Advertising: Men's Cognitive React to Women's Appeal

“…Mothersbaugh and Hawkins (2016) stated that the attention garnered by stimulus factors tends to be relatively automatic by one of the stimuli is attractive visuals. One of the studies concludes that sexual appeal evokes "sexual" emotion that is useful to promote product hence, many advertisers choose sexual appeal to promote that makes, sexual appeals remains effective until this day while the line between forbidden and attractive have crossed several times (Zachrari et al 2018;Hu, et al 2020). Other studies also stated due to the attractions possessed by women, there are an unlimited number of organizations exploiting women Framework relating to the women's appeal that will 2. evoke men's reaction; rationally and emotionally that will affect their intention to buy.…”

“…The previous studies talking about women in advertisement (Das and Sharma, 2016;Zachari et al 2018;Alam et al 2019;Hu et al 2020;Yusop, 2021) stated that sex appeal has been proven effective to raise awareness. In the nature of women has the appeal to make people regardless the gender to turn heads in to the advertisements presented to gain more brand awareness and lure people in to learn more about the product being an advert.…”

Stimulus Iklan, Positive Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) dan Belanja Impulsif: Dampak Mediasi Motif Hedonis Pembelanja Online

“…Namun menurut hasil penelitian Hu, et al (2020), dampak iklan terhadap preferensi konsumen tergantung kepada tingkatan kognitif konsumen dan jenis produk yang diiklankan, apakah utilitarian product atau hedonic product. Dalam kaitan ini Drolet et al (2007) menyatakan bahwa pesan iklan yang rasional lebih banyak ditujukan untuk produk-produk yang bersifat ulitarian, sementara emotional ads lebih populer digunakan untuk membangkitkan motif hedonis konsumennya.…”