Female Power Portrayals in Ads, Underlying Dimensions

Stereotypical female portrayals are still common in advertisements, though the role of women in society has progressed. In recent years, it appears there has been a move toward portraying women in power positions in ads. This research focuses on this new trend of female portrayals in ads. Power is defined as the capability to change others’/self behavior or thoughts. Building on theories of social power and feminine power, a new typology for different types of female power in ads is proposed. This typology includes five types of female power in ads including sexual power, athletic power, expert power, family power, and empowerment. To determine the viability of this classification system, participants are asked to complete a sorting task. A set of current pre-rated print ads are given to participants for them to sort into ads that demonstrate a similar type of female power in the same category. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) and hierarchical clustering of the results from sorting is used to extract the underlying dimensions of female power in ads and provide empirical evidence for the proposed typology. Future research might study interrelations between female power dimensions in ads and also study the consequences of exposure to female power portrayals

EFFECTS OF PRODUCT EXPERTISE, MESSAGE INVOLVEMENT AND DECEPTIVE CLAIM STRATEGY ON COGNITIVE RESPONSES AND ATTITUDES

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of message involvement and product expertise on the net valence of message-related cognitive responses and attitudes of receivers of advertisements varying in degree of objective and subjective content. Hypotheses were tested in a 3 (deceptive claim strategy: an ad with primarily objective claims, an ad with an equal balance of objective and subjective claims, and an ad with primarily subjective claims) x 2 (message involvement: more or less) factorial design using product expertise as a covariate in an analysis of covariance framework. Approximately one month after responding to items concerning their product expertise, product class involvement, and attitude toward magazine advertising, subjects were assigned to one of two message involvement groups and were given one of three advertising portfolios to examine for short time during a regular meeting of their organization. Measures of cognitive response, brand and nonbrand evaluation strategy, message focus, attribute importance, and brand beliefs were then obtained. When consumers are exposed to ads with varying degrees of objective content, findings suggest message involvement positively impacts net valence of cognitive responses and brand attitudes. Under these conditions, product expertise appears to be (directly) related only to attitudes. When ads with primarily subjective claims are used, message involvement positively impacts cognitive responses of only those with more expertise. However, involvement directly impacts attitudes of consumers with more and less product expertise. Further, results among those exposed to ads with primarily subjective claims, more involved experts have more positively valenced message-related cognitive responses, but not brand attitudes, than more involved nonexperts. In addition, more involved nonexperts\u27 brand attitudes exceed those of less involved experts. These results indicate a major assumption of the reasonable consumer criterion in deceptive advertising law may not hold and suggest public policy in this area should be modified. Further, results imply expertise effects cannot be explained by greater message involvement; the constructs appear to work independently or interactively, depending on the nature of the ad. Findings suggest expertise and message involvement constitute viable segmentation bases for advertisers considering ads with varying degrees of objective and subjective content.(Abstract shortened with permission of author.

Female power portrayals in advertising

Although stereotypical female portrayals are still common in advertisements, in recent years it appears there has been a move toward portraying women in powerful positions in ads. This research investigates the recent trend in advertising that portrays women in positions of power and offers a typology of female power dimensions in ads. Building on previous literature on social power, feminine power, and current trends in advertising, a typology for female power is proposed and verified using two studies. In the first study, data from a pile sort of current print ads is collected and analyzed by cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. In the second study, semi-structured interviews are employed to verify the proposed typology. Results verified that receivers perceive female power in advertisements in the following power dimensions: sexual power, expert power, family power, and empowerment (including athletic power).This article is published as Melika Kordrostami & Russell N. Laczniak (2021) Female power portrayals in advertising, International Journal of Advertising, DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2021.1998878. Posted with permission

Evaluating Adolescents’ Responses to Internet Ads: Role of Ad Skepticism, Internet Literacy, and Parental Mediation

In this article, we first compare adolescents’ responses to two formats (easily recognizable versus not easily recognizable) Internet ads. We find that Internet literacy and ad skepticism are necessary for adolescents to effectively apply persuasion knowledge to identify both ad formats. Second, we demonstrate that parental mediation and parents’ levels of Internet skills are critical for children’s development of Internet literacy. As a result, this article advances our understanding of adolescents’ responses to different Internet ad formats and the influential role of parental mediation in facilitating children’s development of such skills