Branding beyond the gender binary

Abstract

Gender is a fundamental pillar of personal identity, and as such, gendered brand personality is an equally important aspect of brand identity, as it enables consumers to express their gender identity through consumption. However, as gender attitudes and identities change to reflect the broader culture, marketers must continuously re‐evaluate how changing gender attitudes and identities will impact consumers' responses to gendered brands. This paper examines the effect of congruence between Gendered Brand Personality and consumer psychological gender on brand outcomes using two online experiments with USA and UK samples. Our findings indicate that congruence between brand gender and psychological gender increases brand equity and purchase intention in brand gender communication contexts including through logo, model, and usage setting. This congruence effect is driven by consumer self‐referencing. A follow‐up qualitative study using a focus group adds additional insights for the congruence effect in terms of potential boundary conditions and alternative underlying mechanisms beyond self‐referencing. These findings suggest that marketers should design their own brand personality to be in line with target consumers' psychological gender.

Evolving brand boundaries and expectations: looking back on brand equity, brand loyalty, and brand image research to move forward

“…Gender identity is often signaled through consumption (Avery, 2012), which ignores gender inclusivity – all gender identities and expressions. While there is a trend toward blurred gender boundaries in branding (Cooke et al , 2022), most societies are androcentric – focused on men – that devalue affiliation with feminine brands (Sandhu, 2017). Branding leaders can play a role in ensuring inclusivity of gender, race and ideology, in ways that reduce inequalities (Crockett and Grier, 2020) in their research and practices.…”

Flirting in service encounters: does the server’s sex matter?

“…Future research may wish to control external characteristics of flirters and customers, which have been linked to individuals’ preferences for sexual attraction, such as height, weight, and complexion (Whyte et al , 2021). Furthermore, as most people no longer identify as purely male or female (Cooke et al , 2022), customers’ sexuality should be another factor in future studies when examining the effect of flirting on customers in cross-sex encounters. In addition, following EP, it is not surprising that females – more than males – have acquired the adaptive ability to interpret “fake” mating cues and identify insincere mating advances (flirting) from males.…”

What's love got to do with it? Exploring the role of universities and third places in supporting human mate choice

“…The second study consisted of a short seven (7) question online survey, using the Qualtrics software, and sourced via Lucid Marketplace [1], an online commercial survey panel. This software and commercial survey panel approach is comparable with similar previous behavioural research (Cooke et al, 2022;Whyte et al, 2022). Respondents were reimbursed for participation in line with the standard payment schedule for the Lucid Marketplace panel participants (60c USD).…”