Purpose
Biological sex is an important segmenting variable in marketing. Yet its ability to meaningfully distinguish beyond the female/male dichotomy is limited. With traditional gender roles continuously shifting and contemporary fluid conceptualizations of gender altering the consumption mainstream, the diverse and multi-faceted behaviours related to gender elude market segment distinctions that are based on biological sex alone. Thus far, researchers have had only limited success applying the concept of gender identity and gender schema theory to inform marketing research and management. The purpose of this study is to further develop a consumer decision-oriented scale that addresses this gap by providing a more sensitive method of segmentation.
Design/methodology/approach
The scale was validated according to common psychological scale development techniques.
Findings
Not only does the Consumption Gender Scale predict the behaviours and media preferences of traditional, gender-schematic male and female consumer segments, but it also accounts for the variance in the behaviours of gender-aschematic non-traditional men and women. We demonstrate the scale’s predictive power in two experimental studies and discuss its potential to serve as an intermediary variable that can predict product attitudes and purchase intentions on social media.
Research limitations/implications
The Consumption Gender Scale was based on surveys and experiments conducted in the USA. Future research could examine the suitability of the scale in other cultural contexts.
Practical implications
The Consumption Gender Scale provides a finer taxonomy for organizations to use in segmenting their target market on the basis of consumption-relevant gender rather than biological sex. Consequently, it also provides opportunities for managers to fine-tune their media-planning efforts.
Originality/value
Biological sex as the main segmenting variable has become inadequate because of ongoing shifts in gender roles and changes in associated consumption behaviours. To address the shortcomings of traditional methods, we advocate for and validate a continuous measurement scale.
The dataset provided with this article is related to “Lowering Barriers to Plant-based Diets: The Effect of Human and Non-Human Animal Self-Similarity on Meat Avoidance Intent and Sensory Food Satisfaction”
[1]
. The connection between compassion and adherence to plant-based diets is intuitive. The first dataset is a sample of 372 participants in the United States that was collected online. Trait compassion, measured using the Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale
[2]
, is positively associated with intent to avoid dietary meat consumption. The second set of data, collected online from 131 participants in the United States, provides evidence for the underlying psychological process: the relationship between trait compassion and meat avoidance intent is serially mediated by perceived similarity to other human animals and non-human animals. Similarity scores were measured inversely as perceived distance using heat-map type questionnaire items based on inclusion-of-other-in-the-self (IOS,
[3]
) and relational closeness scales
[4]
. Demographic information, physical characteristics, and measurement of athletic identity are provided
[5]
. These data can be used in psychology research on food studies specifically and to glean more insight on human's connection with other animals in general
[6]
,
[7]
. The supplementary data on participants’ physical characteristics such as BMI, combined with measurement of athletic identity, can inform sports and nutrition science. Survey print-outs, two datasets including scale items, and scripts for analysis are provided.
Purpose
Associated with status, excess and wastefulness, the consumption of luxury is perceived as the antithesis to sustainable development. Entrepreneurs create business cases to mediate positive sustainability changes, which transform markets and institutional arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to propose the concept of value-in-impact as an interface concept to integrate perspectives from entrepreneurship, marketing and ecological economics. It provides interdisciplinarily applicable, generalizable concepts to describe social entrepreneurs’ personal motivations to reconfigure market structures to produce sustainability change.
Design/methodology/approach
The case of Ecuadorian luxury chocolate manufactory To’ak is described in the context of the three pillars of sustainability, chocolate producers and cacao suppliers. Thematic analysis of the founders’ personal narratives provides insight regarding their motivation to use ostensibly antithetical luxury marketing for rainforest preservation and to foster self-reliant communities.
Findings
To’ak pays premium prices to create incentives to community farmers to propagate the rare, DNA-certified cacao exclusive to their products, thereby marginalizing oppressive suppliers. The company’s founders are motivated to excellence in the chocolate industry, having witnessed the loss of the cultural meaning of cacao, rainforest degradation and the dissipation of associated communities. The case study findings illustrate how value-in-impact is interpreted as purposeful configuration of value-in-use and value-in-exchange on luxury markets to produce positive sustainability change.
Originality/value
The notion of value-in-impact describes higher order conceptualizations in business research. It encompasses a holistic understanding of the dynamics within and between societal and natural ecosystems. Its application at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface can lead to improved management and policy decisions.
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