Effects of gender marketing on consumer behaviour

Tobias Wolf

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2008
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783638051521
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: B+, BI - Norwegian School of Management (Norwegian School of Management), course: Understanding the Consumer, language: English, abstract: IntroductionConsumers decision-making styles are supposed to represent a durable cognitiveorientation towards shopping and purchasing that dominates choices. Thereforethey should be important to marketers because they are linked to purchasebehaviour and sales inseparably (Mitchell and Walsh 2004).Bristor and Fischer (1993) stated, "gender is a social concept referring topsychologically, sociologically, or culturally rooted traits, attitudes, beliefs, andbehavioural tendencies. Because gender is a pervasive filter through whichindividuals experience their social world, consumption activities arefundamentally gendered."When Gender Marketing was developed in the United States 15 years ago, itevolved out of the diversity approach. To realize that men's and women's needsare different and that products are not gender neutral was just a logicalconsequence out of the practice with differing consumer needs within differentethnical, religious or cultural groups (Flocke 2006).The main goal of gender marketing is to implement differing needs of men andwomen into the development, distribution, price setting and communication ofproducts and services. Maintainers of this approach consider it as importantbecause of the emerging differences between men and women in their way toarticulate consumption desires, making purchase intentions or evaluate products(Flocke 2006).According to Mitchell and Walsh (2004) "males and females want differentproducts and they are likely to have different ways of thinking about obtainingthese" (: 331).The aim of this paper is to find out how the commitment to a product is increasingby using gender specific advertisement compared to gender neutral advertisement.Therefore, after a short overview about stated gender differences in the scientificliterature, it will discuss three different theoretical models in order to design atesting method: the CVPA (Centrality of Visual Product Aesthetics) as anapproach to identify customer concerns about visuals, the selectivity model todiscover gender differences in information processing and finally the C-Sconstructto detect affections to either connected or separated advertisementappeals.After the evolvement of several hypotheses according to the used models theproposal provides a method for testing the stated presumptions and end up withmanagerial implications and suggestions for further research.