Patriarchal System in Advertising

medium.com

The economic principle I’m exploring is “People generally respond to incentives in predictable ways/Institutions are the ‘rule of the game’ that influence choices”

My research question to help me study the economic principle is “How do companies incentivise men and women differently thru advertising?” The pdf published in Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Botswana titled “What Makes an Effective Advertising for a Man or a Woman?” demonstrates this economic principle because it shows how institutions have set things they believe on how to advertise and what women and men do differently. 

First, in a study that Yarborough conducted, he pulled a group of people into a room and later asked each person separately what they remembered from the room. It showed that women remembered more detail such as whether there was a vase of flowers in the room or a picture hanging on the wall, while the men remembered the overall picture, like where a desk was located. This connects to advertisements in the sense that it shows how women are detailed oriented and pay attention to the words while men are more interested in the visual. Along with that, Yarborough discusses about the BC times and how men had to be hunters and gatherers and women mentally mapped out barriers, bushes, and where stored food is located. Yarborough concluded from this that women’s two halves of their brain communicate way better than men. This means that women are less related to competition like men and are more intact with their emotions and are also really good with reading into subtle distinctions, features, or arguments.

 Second, McArthur and Resk found some interesting differences between women and men within TV advertisements. It talks about how for men their credibility is usually being authorities and women are usually users. Also, women and men differ in the sense that men are independent of others in their roles while women are dependent of relationships. Like how women are dependent of their relationships, they are usually seen within a home while a man is usually at some type of work that they are appeared to be successful in usually. This gives off the perception that men are more intelligent than women and also with that, they noticed that men give more scientific responses compared to women. So, overall they found that women are not as superior to men when it comes to how they are advertising.

Third, this pdf concluded with an overall list of findings. First, it discusses how women overall process more information well, while men use mental shortcuts to analyze an advertisement, however in ads men are perceived as the more intelligent and successful one which contradicts the actuality of things. Along with that, it discusses how women are more body conscious because of advertising and tend to pay attention to nutritional value of something more than men, which connects back to women looking into the more detailed side of a product than men. However, all of this is seen differently within different countries because they have different cultural values.

 In my next blog post I will research: How the portrayal of women are different currently and have changed since earlier times.