When sex doesn\u2019t sell to men: mortality salience, disgust and the appeal of products and advertisements featuring sexualized women

Seon Min Lee,Seungwoo Chun,Heeyoung Kim,Nathan A Heflick,Jieun Koo,Joon Woo Park

doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9615-9

Abstract

Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of products (e.g., perfume and vodka). Men became more negative towards advertisements featuring female sexuality, and had reduced purchase intentions for those products, after thinking about their own mortality. Study 2 found that these effects were mediated by heightened disgust. Mortality thoughts did not impact women in either study. These findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of death interact with female sex-appeal to influence men’s consumer choices, and that disgust mediates these processes. Implications for the role of emotion, and cultural differences, in terror management, for attitudes toward female sexuality, and for marketing strategies are discussed.

Highlights

Using sexuality—and in particular female sexuality—to sell products has a pronounced history that continues today
Research based on Terror Management Theory (TMT) (Greenberg et al 1986) provides insight into when men might be less inclined to be drawn to advertisements featuring female sexuality
We tested if our intended “sex-appeal” advertisements were deemed to differ in sexuality from the control advertisements

Summary

Introduction

Using sexuality—and in particular female sexuality—to sell products has a pronounced history that continues today. In 2003, 27% of advertisements featured female sexualization, up from 15% in 1983 (Reichert et al 2012) This popularity occurs across media types and cultures (Nelson and Paek 2005). Despite their prevalence, research shows that these advertisements typically increase the appeal of products for men, but not for women (Baumeister and Twenge 2002; Dahl et al 2009; Ford et al 1991; Griffitt and Kaiser 1978; LaTour 1990; LaTour and Henthorne 1993; Richmond and Hartman 1982; Sengupta and Dahl 2008; Wyllie et al 2014). Advertismeents are more effective when product endorsers are viewed favorably (Goldsmith et al 2000; Martin et al 2002; Petty et al 1983; Vakratsas and Ambler 1999), In turn, we hypothesized that for men (but not women) thoughts of human mortality should reduce the effectiveness of these advertisements

Results

Discussion

Conclusion