Gender, identity and the consumption of advertising

Abstract

This paper seeks to challenge the tendency to represent gender as a unitary theoretical construct; and would argue for a more differentiated view of how the psychological aspects of gender influence the consumption of advertising. We use a small‐scale exploratory study to examine the potential impact of gender identity within consumers’ self‐schemas on their consumption of advertising. Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (SRI) was administered to 25 young adults who then watched video clips of two television advertisements. The focus group discussions about the two advertisements were analysed within the context of the respondents’ gender schemas identified via the Bem SRI scores: masculine, feminine, androgynous or undifferentiated. The centrality of gender identity to self‐schemas affected how consumers processed and interpreted the advertising. This provides support for a more differentiated approach to representing men and women within gender research and advertising because gender groups are neither necessarily homogeneous nor isomorphic with sex.