The Effect of Masculinity and Femininity Incongruence on Consumer Responses to Brands

Abstract

This article examines the effect of incongruence between consumer gender and brand gender on consumers’ affective, cognitive, behavioral and relational responses toward brands. It introduces the notion of consumer-brand boundary as the perceived psychological distance between a consumer and a focal brand, validates a measure of this construct, and demonstrates that consumer-brand boundary mediates gender incongruence effects. Two studies show that both masculinity and femininity incongruence increase consumer-brand boundary, and that lower masculinity incongruence only mitigates consumer-brand boundary when femininity incongruence is also low (but not when it is high). Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.