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05-09-2018

The effect of traditionally marginalized groups in advertising on consumer response

Authors: Enrica N. Ruggs, Jennifer Ames Stuart, Linyun W. Yang

Published in: Marketing Letters | Issue 3/2018

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Abstract

Increasingly, national brands have cast people from marginalized groups in advertising. It is important to understand the elements that influence consumers’ responses to advertisements featuring groups who have been traditionally excluded from advertising campaigns. Although consumers may wish to buy brands that support their own views on human rights and equality, we propose that consumers in the target market may be uncomfortable if the group portrayal contradicts their beliefs about the topic, concept, or social groups in the ad. Across two studies, we show that when an ad creates this type of internal contradiction within consumers, it may elicit a more negative response than an ad portraying a more traditional model. However, we also find preliminary evidence that using models from marginalized groups can be more effective than using more traditional models—as long as such portrayals do not violate certain target consumers’ schemas. The implications of these results will be discussed.

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A pretest with a sample of n = 122 participants indicated that relative to a family with a father and a mother, both parents and non-parents perceived a family with same-sex parents as more incongruent with their schemas related to wholesome families (F(1, 118) = 24.19, p < .001) but not incongruent with their schemas of what represents busy families (F(1, 118) = 0.70, n.s).

A manipulation check was included in the study to ensure that participants viewed the people in the ad as a family. In the straight parents condition, all participants believed the ad portrayed a committed couple. In the gay parents condition, 69 participants believed the ad portrayed a committed couple, 11 participants believed the ad portrayed two friends, and one participant chose “other.” All participants were included in the following analyses although omitting participants who failed the manipulation check yielded the same pattern of results.

Results from a pretest support the schema incongruity manipulations such that overweight models were rated as less congruent than thin models with participants’ schema of a successful woman (F(1, 155) = 5.56, p < .05) and active woman (F(1, 155) = 82.73, p < .001). No differences were seen for the busy schema between perceptions of overweight and thin models (F(1, 155) = 1.03, n.s).

An anonymous reviewer raised the question of how people may have interpreted the description of “successful woman,” and whether it was possible that the overweight model was perceived as active but not successful in weight management. Qualitative data from a second pre-study (sample N = 130) examining people’s schemas suggests that over 50% of respondents characterized a successful woman using terms related career and professionalism, whereas only 10% mentioned descriptors related to health or weight. Specifically, many participants described the “successful woman” schema as someone who dresses professionally. These findings suggest that people’s schema of a “successful woman” focused on professional dress to a much greater extent than weight management. When we combine this information with results from our other pre-study showing that the overweight model was incongruent with participants’ schemas about success, we believe that our primary findings occurred because of differences in how participants process the incongruity of overweight and success versus the incongruity of overweight and active (e.g., differences in perceived controllability), not because there was a misinterpretation in the intended schema violation for the success condition.

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Title: The effect of traditionally marginalized groups in advertising on consumer response
Authors: Enrica N. Ruggs
Jennifer Ames Stuart
Linyun W. Yang
Publication date: 05-09-2018
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Marketing Letters / Issue 3/2018
Print ISSN: 0923-0645
Electronic ISSN: 1573-059X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-018-9468-3

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