The Perceived Empowering And Brand-related Effects Of Femvertising

Abstract

The main goal of the dissertation was to expand the existing literature related to femvertising by providing an extensive literature review and by exploring and confirming new theoretical connections related to diverse disciplines, such as marketing, sociology, and psychology. Besides, the study also aimed to respond to the previously identified research gaps regarding femvertising by exploring the phenomenon cross-culturally, and also by providing future research directions. Thus, the dissertation expanded the current theoretical framework by the following contributions, related to theory, methodology, context, and future research directions. (1) An extensive literature review has been provided, which is based on the most cited publications from the Scopus database in different disciplines, related to women empowerment, gender equality, and gender stereotypes, with special attention to femvertising and its perceived empowering and brand-related effects. The findings are also presented in summary tables. (2) New connections between concepts were identified and new variables were tested by structural equitation modeling. This is one of the first studies of femvertising to link various constructs in a single theoretical framework, providing a comprehensive understanding of femvertising and its perceived empowering and brand-related effects. The innovative findings consisted of the dimensions of women empowerment, such as decision-making, control over income, and self-esteem, which were discussed along femvertising in qualitative research, among the first studies to discuss this complex phenomenon in a marketing setting. Additionally, another variable has been investigated in the setting of femvertising, which has not been at the center of previous research related to this topic: by including gender role equality attitude in this research related to femvertising, both in the qualitative and quantitative studies, several useful insights were gained, proving its moderating role on the relationship between perceived women empowerment and the attitude towards the advertisement. (3) A rarely used methodology related to the literature on femvertising, interviewing has been applied for the exploration of this concept (as recommended by Middleton et al., 2020), providing further insights on its empowering and brand-related effects. (4) In addition to the theoretical framework's new findings, the dissertation tested the following scales in the context of femvertising: perceived women empowerment (Teng et al., 2020), attitude towards the advertising (Wells, 1964; modified by Abitbol & Sternadori, 2019; Sternadori & Abitbol, 2019; Kapoor & Munjal, 2017), attitude towards the brand (Mitchell & Olson, 1981; modified by Dahlén at al., 2008), purchase intent (Teng et al., 2020) and gender role equality attitude (Gender Role Attitudes Scale of García-Cueto et al., 2015; modified by Jinah, 2022). The results provided additional insights into the applicability of these scales. (5) The phenomenon of femvertising has been investigated in a new context in the current research, realizing cross-cultural qualitative studies with interviewing techniques in Hungary, Mexico, and Iceland and a quantitative study in Hungary. Among the first studies, the dissertation explored femvertising in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and other Nordic countries other than Sweden, instead of investigating it in well-researched, English-speaking nations with high gender equality, such as the United States and the United Kingdom (Global Gender Gap Report, 2022). (6) New future research directions have been also provided to further investigate the phenomenon of femvertising.