A Quasi-Experimental Approach to Analyzing Sexual Appeal and Gender in Advertising – Evidence from Brazil

Purpose – The use of sexual appeal in advertisements is a common practice in promotion, and its acceptance can vary throughout cultures. In the last twenty years, its use has been evaluated in several markets, including Brazil, where this research study was undertaken. The purpose of the study is to measure the effects of sexual appeal in advertisements on consumers, comparing the role of gender and perceptions about models’ idealized bodies. Design/Methodology/Approach – Two quasi-experiments were conducted on a dataset obtained from a non-probabilistic sample using online questionnaires. Both studies consider the effect of using sexual appeal in advertisements. The first used gym advertisements to compare the attitudes and purchase intention between men and women. The second assessed the use of female models with and without idealized appearance in beer advertisements. Findings and implications – It was observed that advertisements with low sexual appeal resulted in better evaluations; however, those with a higher level of sexual appeal were better evaluated by men if containing female models with characteristics typically considered to be attractive. On the other hand, women rated more highly the ads using female models with no features commonly regarded as attractive. Thus, it was concluded that gender can influence the advertising format to be adopted by companies: in the case of a female target audience, it is probably better to use models without “ideal” characteristics, but the opposite may have a more significant effect when it comes to a male target audience. This clearly incongruent perspective – gender-based bias – is a critical issue for managers and researchers. Limitations – This study only focused on a narrow dataset made up of Brazilian respondents, which was used as a non-probabilistic, convenience sample. Originality – This study is the first to use a quasi-experimental approach, connecting gender attitudes to brands and ads to bodies of idealized models and sexual appeal effects in ads.