Doing Business as Usual Wouldn’t Cut it Anymore: Gender Identity and Consumers’ Brand Perceptions

Abstract

Gender, one of the most profound social factors, shapes and constructs our individual activities and group experiences. Gender, as a complex social-psychological construct, has been distinguished from sex in that sex refers to a person's physiological identity, while gender refers to psychological features associated with physiological sex that are socially constructed (Bem 1974, 1981; Spence and Helmriech 1978). The marketing literature to date largely treats gender and sex as interchangeable concepts; therefore, the marketing literature has demonstrated little success in predicting gender-related consumer behavior in an increasingly complex market setting replete with highly-specialized product offerings (Palan 2001).