Consumer reactions towards femvertising: a netnographic study

Abstract

PurposeThis paper identifies consumer reactions towards female empowerment in advertising in order to explore the supporting arguments for criticisms of lack of authenticity and the figuring of sexist stereotypes.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a multi-case study research with content analysis of 905 coded online comments in a video hosting website towards four femvertising campaigns.FindingsResults indicate that femvertising plays an important role in the emotional connection between women and brands, but consumers may react negatively to femvertising when brands do not show knowledge about the real feminist values, maintaining sexist stereotypes. Consumers also blame companies of hypocrite and exploitation to sell products if there is not authenticity and brand-cause fit.Originality/valueFemvertising appears as a consequence of cultural changes and corporate social responsibility in order to engage women consumers. This paper contributes with explanations to sustain the dichotomic reactions towards femvertising, showing evidence of why some people react favourably and other people react negatively.

A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Garnier Green Beauty Advertisement

“…In the last few years, more and more cosmetic brands have embraced this style in their advertising as they compete to portray women as empowering figures. Therefore, we found it not surprising that Garnier employs femvertising: it may have been a deliberate marketing decision as femvertising is beneficial in building an emotional connection between women and brands (Lima & Casais, 2021).…”

Femvertising or femwashing? Women's perceptions of authenticity

“…Although research suggests that femvertising can improve consumer attitudes (Abitbol & Sternadori, 2016; Kapoor & Munjal, 2017) and reduce reactance (Åkestam et al, 2017), consumers' reactions to femvertising attempts remain equivocal. Their skepticism is observable both in the literature (Feng et al, 2019; Lima & Casais, 2021) and in verbatim comments in previous studies that suggest women question the authenticity of some femvertising attempts (Duffy, 2010), qualifying them as “ awkward ” and “ condescending ” (Tan, 2017, p. 2). As with greenwashing, consumers began talking about femwashing on social media to denounce inauthentic femvertising (Grauby‐Vermeil, 2019).…”

Femvertising practices on social media: a comparison of luxury and non-luxury brands

“…Additionally, there is scarce evidence regarding the use and effectiveness of femvertising across different contexts. While studies show that the effectiveness of femvertising varies based on ad and product type (Abitbol and Sternadori, 2020; Plakoyiannaki and Zotos, 2009), limited research examines femvertising practices in different product categories and types of brands (Champlin et al , 2019; Lima and Casais, 2021; Pankiw et al , 2020), such as luxury brands. Yet, luxury brands present a valuable context of investigation because of the increasing value of the luxury brands market (Statista, 2022b).…”

“…Empirical evidence shows that femvertising lowers advertising reactance and positively influences advertising purchase intentions (Åkestam et al, 2017;Drake, 2017;Feng et al, 2019). More specifically, Åkestam et al (2017) indicate that less stereotypical depictions of women are more favourable, whereas recent research by Lima and Casais (2021) in the context of personal care brands identifies that femvertising facilitates emotional connections between the brand and the consumer.…”