Gender differences in student attitudes towards sexual appeals in print advertising

Abstract

Sexuality is a widely used appeal in advertising today. The aim of this research was to establish whether or not this form of advertising connects with South African students and whether gender differences existed. A triangulated research design with data collected in focus groups, was used. The findings generally indicated negative attitudes towards sexual appeals in advertising. The main difference in gender responses was that males responded more negatively to adverts that contained male models as opposed to female models, whereas, women responded in similar ways regardless of the gender of the model.