Is the Marlboro man the only alternative? The role of gender identity and self-construal salience in evaluations of male
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Is the Marlboro man the only alternative? The role of gender identity and self-construal salience in evaluations of male models Brett A. S. Martin & Juergen Gnoth
Published online: 30 January 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract This research examines how men react to male models in print advertisements. In two experiments, we show that the gender identity of men influences their responses to advertisements featuring a masculine, feminine, or androgynous male model. In addition, we explore the extent to which men feel they will be classified by others as similar to the model as a mechanism for these effects. Specifically, masculine men respond most favorably to masculine models and are negative toward feminine models. In contrast, feminine men prefer feminine models when their private self is salient. Yet in a collective context, they prefer masculine models. These experiments shed light on how gender identity and self-construal influence male evaluations and illustrate the social pressure on men to endorse traditional masculine portrayals. We also present implications for advertising practice. Keywords Advertising . Classification expectations . Gender identity . Self-construal . Evaluations
1 Introduction An important decision for advertisers is the selection of an appropriate model to use in an advertisement. In reference to our title, the Marlboro man is an example of the traditional masculine male model in advertising. Content analyses suggest that advertisers tend to use traditional male stereotypes (Ganahl et al. 2003; Vigorito and Curry 1998). Yet whether the traditional male is the only depiction that would resonate with consumers today appears open to debate. In the social sciences, it is accepted that B. A. S. Martin (*) Marketing Group School of Management, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Gnoth Department of Marketing, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]
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Market Lett (2009) 20:353–367
a variety of masculinities now exist, such as jocks to sensitive new men (Smiler 2004). Likewise, marketing research is revealing consumer masculinities that differ from the traditional norm (Holt and Thompson 2004; Patterson and Elliott 2002). These emerging masculinities have been recognized in the popular press with the term “metrosexual” to represent a $1.3 billion market of heterosexual men who use traditionally feminine products, such as facial moisturizers (Prior 2004). Given these changes, it appears useful to study whether alternative profiles to the masculine model (e.g., feminine male models) should be considered. The purpose of this article is to examine how men respond to print advertising featuring masculine, feminine, and androgynous male models. We show that gender identity affects evaluations, but that these effects must take into account consumer self-construal. We use the term “biological sex” to refer to the physical differences between males and females. In contrast, “gender ide
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