51. Unexpected Target: College Females' Attraction to Male-Targeted Health Marketing

Abstract

Female college students continue to be a difficult population to effectively reach with health marketing and prevention efforts. Traditional marketing principles such as targeting gender, age, and message relevance have been used to guide development of health marketing design. Self-socialization theory and gender schema theory support these principles and suggest that effective advertisements display images of similar age, same gender, and relevant message to that of target population. Further study is needed in methods of analysis to enhance the development of future health marketing.