Advertising Sex-Typed Services: The Effects of Sex, Service Type, and Employee Type on Consumer Attitudes

Abstract

Abstract Abstract The use of employee spokespersons in the advertising of services has received growing attention in the academic literature because the presence of an employee in the advertisement may help visualize the service offering for the customer by providing a physical representation of the service provider. Moreover, a decrease in occupational segregation indicates a potential need for repositioning traditionally sex-typed services. The author examines the use of male versus female employees and the use of service managers versus workers for sex-typed services. Two separate samples were used: students and working adults. For the student sample, results suggest that for female-dominant services, congruency between the source and the service results in higher cognitive attitudes toward the ad. However, for a male-dominant service, a congruent approach and a progressive role portrayal produce equivalent attitudes. For the sample of working adults, results indicate that a congruent and a progressive approach produce equivalent attitudes. Overall, they suggest that (1) among working adults, whether or not a service is male or female dominant has little influence on whether a man or a woman should be pictured in an ad for that service and (2) student samples are not the best surrogates to use in experimental research if students are not typical consumers of the product(s) being tested.