Study Explains How Women's Attitude Towards Sexy Ads Can be Improved

In a recent study, presented in the article "Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role of Relationship Commitment" published in "Journal of Consumer Research", scientists tried to answer the question on whether sexy pictures can improve the sales of products.

Being involved in severe competition, marketers continuously implement drastic ideas into life to attract the consumer. In many cases they advertise products with the help of nude pictures and sexual language in the ads.

The team of scientists, led by the authors of the research Darren W. Dahl from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jaideep Sengupta from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Kathleen D. Vohs from the University of Minnesota decided to further develop an earlier study that showed that women have negative attitudes towards advertising that uses explicit sexual content.

The authors of the study said that their research was based on the existing perspectives in sexual psychology that states that men and women show different sexual beliefs and motivations. Men feel more democratic in regard to casual and frivolous sex, while women are more into to the emotional intimacy and commitment around sexual relationship.

Researchers consider that the women's outlook on sexually oriented advertising can be changed if the ads interpret sex in accordance with the women's values, for instance if sexual behavior is shown as a sign of commitment.

"Findings from our initial experiments were supportive of this hypothesis. Experiment 1 illustrated that commitment-related cues in the ad itself (for example, positioning the product as a gift to a woman from a man) boosted women's attitudes," write the authors of the study.

Scientists suggest that marketers should be very careful when launching a sexual advertising. At the same time they say that the idea of sexually explicit content in advertising should not be abandoned, since their experiment demonstrated that a proper use of positioning and relationship context have the ability to improve the attitudes of women towards a sexual ad and brand.