Mating and marketing

Abstract

Mating motives, informed by an evolutionary perspective, are central to marketing and consumer behavior. Humans have an evolved menu of mating strategies that vary along a temporal continuum anchored by long-term committed mating (e.g., marriage) and short-term mating (e.g., one-night stands, brief affairs). Men and women, although similar in some ways, differ in their psychology of short-term and long-term mating in some respects. The proposed framework yields a four-quadrant matrix useful for more gender-specific and mating strategy-specific marketing—women's long-term, men's long-term, women's short-term, and men's short-term. Mating psychology within these quadrants include mate choice copying, error management, the sexual over-perception bias, cues to sexual exploitation, good-dad mate preferences, temporal discounting, and the psychology of opportunity costs. Discussion focuses on gender-specific marketing, market segmentation, implicit versus explicit mating cues, the importance of context, consumer's long-term interests, and the power of attention-grabbing mating cues for non-mating related products and consumer behavior.