Beyond "Pink It and Shrink It" Perceived Product Gender, Aesthetics, and Product Evaluation

By M. V. Tilburg, Theo Lieven, Andreas Herrmann, Claudia Townsend. 2015

100 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Marketing research on product personality suggests that products possess gender; however, the process by which a product becomes masculine or feminine is unknown. This research identifies product aesthetics as a source of product masculinity and femininity and investigates the influence of product gender created by aesthetics on consumer behavior. Building on prior work on anthropomorphism and evolutionary psychology (EP), the authors broadly hypothesize that specific physical characteristics identified as representing masculinity and femininity—and thus considered attractive in the mate selection process—will have a similar effect on products. The first study identifies the impact of the aesthetic dimensions of form (proportion, shape, and lines), color (tones, contrast, and reflection), and material (texture, surface, and weight) on defining a product’s gender. The second study shows that products that are strongly gendered, particularly those that are strong in both the masculine and feminine dimensions, result in positive affective and behavioral responses. Thus, this research identifies product aesthetics as a significant source of product gender while highlighting the theoretical contribution of EP to consumer behavior. Managerial implications for product design are then discussed, offering guidelines for creating strongly gendered products.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0abb03be7ae5406baafa75014fe93fee2ecdfbe

Citations in the corpus

• The Visual Asymmetry Effect: An Interplay of Logo Design and Brand Personality on Brand Equity (2018, unknown): “Finally, consumers’ responses to visual stimuli can vary cross-culturally (Henderson et al. 2003; Van der Lans et al. 2009) and differ across individuals (Bloch 1995; Bloch, Bru-nel, and Arnold 2003).”
• Brand gender and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook: The mediating role of consumer-brand engagement and brand love (2019, unknown): “…feminine can lead to critical consumer–brand-related responses (Azar, Aimé, & Ulrich, 2018; Grohmann, 2009; Lieven, Grohmann, Herrmann, Landwehr, & Tilburg, 2015; Ulrich, 2013; van Tilburg, Lieven, Herrmann, & Townsend, 2015), and ultimately influence consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) (Lieven,…”