Consumer Responses to Print Advertisements Featuring Gay Males Over Time

Abstract

Heterosexual participants browsed a digital magazine containing advertisements featuring gay males before completing a questionnaire measuring ad appeal and consumer behavioral intentions related to the advertised brands immediately after exposure. Participants exposed to the digital magazine and those in a control group then reported consumer behavioral intentions 3 weeks post-exposure. Ad appeal was positively correlated with cognitive effort, suggesting participants who liked the advertisements featuring gay males exerted more effort attending to and evaluating the ads. Participants who found the advertisements featuring gay couples appealing reported higher consumer behavioral intentions than participants who deemed the advertisements unappealing immediately following exposure and 3 weeks post-exposure. The consumer behavioral intentions of participants who found advertisements featuring gay couples unappealing significantly increased after a 3-week delay, but did not change among those who found the advertisements appealing. The findings suggest that the influence of negative reactions to gay imagery in advertisements fades after a short temporal delay, whereas the influence of positive reactions to gay imagery in advertisements is more lasting. Implications of this research for theory and practice are discussed.