Offering products "for him” or “for her” is risky business

SCIENCE NEWS FROM KRISTIANIA: On gendered marketing

Over the past decade, multiple brands have been accused of sexism as they offered products that seemed unnecessarily gendered: from “BIC for her”, a line of pens just for women, to Kleenex with its “mansize” tissues. The epitome may have been reached when the CEO of PepsiCo announced that Doritos was working on “lady-friendly” chips, arguing that women “don’t like to crunch too loudly in public”.  Consumers were outraged, accusing Doritos of sexism. 

To better understand this phenomenon, I investigated how consumers respond to gendered products, focusing on whether they view the brands behind those gendered products as sexist. 

Consumers are negative about gendered products 

To start my investigation, I conducted an experiment in which I told participants that SodaCola — a fictive brand — announced they would launch a low-calorie soda. To half of the participants, I told this new soda would be called “Lady SodaCola” and have pink packaging. To the other half of the participants, I told it would be called “Diet SodaCola” and have yellow packaging.

I then asked participants how sexist they perceived SodaCola to be and how likely they were to spread word-of-mouth about it. As I predicted, participants informed about “Lady SodaCola” (i.e., a gendered product) viewed the brand as more sexist than participants informed about “Diet SodaCola” (i.e., a non-gendered product) and they were more willing to spread negative word-of-mouth about it. Besides, launching a low-calorie soda named “Lady SodaCola” was perceived as a less legitimate practice than launching a low-calorie soda named “Diet SodaCola”. In sum, these results confirmed that consumers respond adversely to a gendered product.   

Personal beliefs affect response   

I also predicted that two personal characteristics could modify how consumers respond to gendered products: if they are feminist and if they endorse sexist beliefs. I found this was indeed the case. Consumers who identify as feminist are more inclined to view brands behind gendered products as sexist. Conversely, consumers who endorse sexist beliefs are less prone to view brands behind gendered products as sexist.   

Legitimate if based on biological differences 

Noting that consumers seem less sceptical towards some types of gendered products than towards other types, I decided to distinguish between products that are gendered based on a stereotype (e.g., men like and tolerate spicy food more than women do) and products that are gendered based on a seemingly biological difference (e.g., men need, on average, a higher protein intake than women).

I tested this in a new study and found that launching protein-rich chips “for men” was perceived to be more legitimate than launching spicy chips “for men”. Furthermore, for participants who believed that men and women have different biological needs in terms of protein intake, launching protein-rich chips “for men” was viewed less sexist than launching spicy chips “for men”.  

Text: Delphine Caruelle, Associate Professor, School of Communication, Leadership and Marketing 

Reference: 

Caruelle, D. (2024). Are brands that perform gendered product differentiation perceived as sexist? An experimental investigation. The Journal of Product & Brand Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-07-2023-4590 

This text was published at Science Norway on the 4th of July 2024 titled "Offering products "for him" or "for her" is risky business."

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