Gender and Ease of Categorization

Abstract

This chapter provides evidence that the positive effect of brand gender on brand equity is supported by the ease of gendered classification and its strong and favorable associations. Since most people belong to one gender or the other, it is easy to determine and classify gender-related features. In an experiment with four portraits of stronger and weaker sex-typed males and females, the highly masculine and feminine photographs were endowed with significantly more associations than the weaker sex-typed portraits. These associations were mostly positive (e.g., attractive, beautiful, friendly, likable, nice, pretty, and smiling). In a subsequent experiment, participants were asked to assign one of the four portraits to each of 20 brands. Brand gender and equity were determined from the ways in which the respondents matched each brand to the portrait they felt best represented it. Although the participants did not know anything about the brands’ genders, feminine portraits tended to be assigned to feminine brands, and vice versa for masculine portraits. Moreover, highly feminine and highly masculine brands were more likely to be classified with highly sex-typed images. When respondents were asked to choose their favorite brand from among the 20, 156 selected the highly sex-typed brands (both feminine and masculine), while a mere 64 selected the less gender-typed brands. This supported the finding that brand gender positively affects brand equity. Furthermore, categorizing the four gender quadrants provided evidence that androgynous brands have significantly higher brand equity than feminine or masculine brands. Undifferentiated brands (i.e., those scoring low on both femininity and masculinity) had the lowest equities.