Sexism in Advertising – Project topics materials

Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »

How Sexist Advertising Influence the Consumer Attitudes of a Company

In general, the respondents’ perception and attitudes towards the companies were affected negatively by the sexist ads. The findings of McKenzie and Lutz (1989) comply with the results from the interviews of this study, which is that the consumer attitudes toward the ad have strong relationship with the attitude toward the company. In the majority of cases, the respondents’ attitude toward the ad and company was homogenous. However, it was not always the case. For example, there were times when the respondents said they did not like the ad, but stated it did not affect their attitude towards the company. Most often in these cases, the respondents referred to the specific company and reasoned in the following fashion: “I don’t think this ad is serious, but I know that Victoria’s Secret is a serious company, and thus I regard the company as serious.” (F3). These kinds of responses were known by the authors as a factor that might bias the intended study to an extent, since the purpose of this study is to understand consumer attitudes towards companies as a general term, and not focusing on any specific companies. However, when receiving these kinds of
responses, the authors asked the respondents to disregard the previous knowledge and experience with specific companies, and only evaluate the company by the ad itself. When doing so, the majority of respondents reported a negative change in attitudes immediately.
Consequently, the respondents’ attitudes towards the company were then complying more with the attitudes towards the ad. The findings of this study were further in line with previous research, which shows that exposure to sexist ads might change young women’s attitude toward the company and their purchasing behavior (Jones & Reid, 2011), and it was applicable to the male sex as well.
The level of perceived unseriousness, low trustworthiness and low credibility, were said to be due to the low product focus, and excessive focus on the woman and her body. This might connect to the level of fit between the elements in the ad and the product being advertised (Sherman & Quester, 2005). When the ads were regarded by the respondents as very sexist, overall degrading or overly sexualized, the companies were considered even less serious, less trustworthy and less credible. These three adjectives were also said to depend on the specific company behind the ad, and the quality of the ad itself. Especially reliability was said to be dependent on what the respondents knew about the company from experience. This complies with previous research stating that personal experiences impacts attitude formation (Schiffman, Wisenblit, & Kanuk, 2010).
When the respondents reflected over the use of overly sexualized images of women, some mentioned that they thought the company was behind the idea that sex sells. This notion is commonly suggested by previous researchers (e.g. Boddewyn & Kunz, 1991; Nelson & Paek, 2005), but the respondents did not seem convinced by the notion themselves. Most of the respondents thought that the companies using ads focusing too much on sex were regarded sexist, did not used an optional marketing strategy, and considered them as old fashioned and to only use cheap tricks to attract customers. It implies that the respondents did not perceive sex, or sexist advertising as a unique selling point, rather the opposite. Further, with this reasoning, most respondents did not regard the ads as innovative. In general, the respondents reported low ratings regarding innovation and originality in the surveys, and commented further in the interviews, that the companies lacked in these adjectives. The respondents thought some of the companies of as original, but a minority of these cases were said to be original in a positive sense, but rather stood out since they were odd. Most respondents said that due to the perception of the ads having quite the same theme and sexist focus, none of the companies were regarded as being innovative. The authors suggest that these critical attitudes of might origin from the fact that the respondents are part of Generation Y. This is a young generation which the authors believe to be more critical to advertising in general, and who demand a higher level of creativity in companies’ marketing strategies. Furthermore, sexual portrayals of women were reported from most respondents to not be in line with today’s society where females and males ought to be treated equally. This was a common reasoning among the respondents why they did not perceive most ads as trendy.
Also, when the women in the ads were perceived overly sexualized and objectified, the respondents regarded the ads as more offensive in general, as well as creating negative attitudes towards the company. For example in ads where the woman had a more challenging and unnatural posture, spreading her legs or arching her back. These negative effects on attitudes from the sexist ads comply with previous studies (e.g. Latour & Henthorne, 1994;Rouner, Slater & Domenech-Rodriguez, 2003). It was a connection between what was considered as offensive and was what considered provocative by the respondents. In turn, what was regarded as offensive and provocative were mostly regarded as highly sexist. The more extreme elements used in the ads, according to the respondents, the more sexist the company was regarded. Extreme elements were described by the respondents as when the ad was very sexual suggestive, objectifying, humiliating, degrading, and stereotypical. These companies were also reported to be the most provocative and offensive as well. Also, the level of provocativeness was reported by some respondents as depending much on the justification of nudity, in accordance with congruity theory (Sherman & Quester, 2005) and the ad’s fit to nudity. Provocativeness also depended on the level of which the female model was regarded independent or subordinated men (Lass & Hall, 2004), if the ad was imposing feministic power (Amy-Chinn, 2006), or appeared as targeting men. The use of excessively skinny models creates unattainable beauty standards (Lavine, Sweeney, & Wagner, 1999) were also considered provocative. The findings from this study were also is in accordance with Groza and Cuesta (2011), stating it the other way around, that the more positive feelings the respondents got from the ad, the less the company was perceived as offensive.

READ PSALM 137 IN THE CANONICAL CONTEXT OF THE PSALTER

1. Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem Definition and Purpose
1.3 Definition
2. Method .
2.1 Research Philosophy .
2.2 Branches of Philosophies
2.3 Research Purpose
2.4 Methodological Choice and Research Strategy .
2.5 Research Approach
2.6 Data Collection
2.7 Sample Selection
2.8 Interview
2.9 Interview Design
2.10 Pilot Testing
2.11 Data Analysis .
2.12 Research Quality
2.13 Research Ethics
3. Literature Review
3.1 Sexism in Advertising
3.2 Determining Sexism in Advertising
3.3 The Gender Perspective .
3.4 Congruity .
3.5 Consumer Attitudes
3.6 Dimensions of a Company
3.7 Company Adjectives
4. Empirical Finding
4.1 The Survey Results
4.2 Summary of the Survey Results
4.3 The Interview Results .
4.4 Summary of Key Findings of the Interviews
5. Analysis .
6. Conclusion
Reference List