Consumer attitude towards gender stereotyping in television advertisements

Abstract

This research work has examined the attitudinal difference between men and women towards the various dimensions of gender stereotypes used by advertisers to visualize women in Television advertisements. The societal categorization of gender as male and female with specific behavioral traits, domestic roles and occupational roles attached to each category, it is being posited that purchase and use of certain products and services are congruent with the traits and roles attached to the gender. Hence advertisements as a vehicle for dissemination of product/service related information capitalize on the gender stereotypes. Through the employment of gender stereotypes in advertisements it is believed that individuals will easily identify themselves with the character roles and this identification will help them to remember, recollect the advertisement and its product information resulting in positive attitude formation and conversion in to purchase. By reason of the above, this work has explored the attitudinal difference between men and women towards gender stereotyping in Television advertisements. The stereotypical dimensions used are role, age group, product category and advertisement back ground. The sample size is 196 with equal number of male and female respondents with all the respondents as graduates. The collected data was analyzed by the statistical methods of Correlation and Pair wise Comparison in One Way Anova using SPSS 23. The results have confirmed attitudinal difference between men and women towards gender stereotyping in Television advertisements and attitude formation was found to be high among women in comparison with men.